Fusillade

Having hiked the steep path that spiraled up Mt. Joy,
we spread our lunch on one of the enormous slabs 
orphaned by the glacier, adjacent to Mt. Misery
and overlooking the fields of Valley Forge
where the troops had waited as they froze. We ate
where, famished, they'd choked down moldy fire-cake 
and grits. Wendy tap-danced on the boulder, 
breasts bouncing merrily, supermarket rose 
clutched between her perfect teeth
as I, mesmerized, sipped Shiraz and munched on
goat cheese and focaccia.
As we watched a wizened old man sweep
the cropped meadow for buttons with a metal detector
an  ethereal musket ball, loosed accidentally
by a pre-pubescent specter from Connecticut
hurtled through my throat, temporarily shredding
my vocal chords. Wendy cradled my head
upon her mammoth mammaries, lured me back to health 
with her feminine medicine.
Returning home after dusk, I slipped into the apartment
and genteelly handed you the extra rose I'd stolen
from the flower department of Wegman's.
You demanded to know where I'd been
all day, and I attempted to explain
but my gullet was still raw from choking 
on that ghostly bullet. My croaked excuses 
thumped off the plaster walls like flung sponges, 
justifications rasped against the splintered board 
that split the king-sized bed.
As I sit here now in the dark, alone, I think of the folly 
of that picnic, of Wendy puckering up 
for a picture I never took
in front of the park's sole waterfall,
the spray erasing her dress, the air around us dense
with an invisible volley of uncanny cannonballs
as I lost you both, and won my independence.