To be a femme fatale you don’t have to be slinky and sensuous and disastrously beautiful,
you just have to have the will to disturb. ― Alice Munro
The night we met
you didn’t look
the way you do now.
I didn’t know now
what I didn’t know then
the night we met.
She was not completely
a loose woman.
She thought
of herself
as rather coy and selective.
I saw her more
like a blinking yellow light
at a highway intersection.
One felt
some sensation
or a need for caution
but no one ever
bothered
to slow down.
9/18/1974