Left To Their Own Devices

Men in her life were like the hamsters she’d had as a child. Left too long by a radiator, they cooked. Or, as the one she took, limp, from his shoe-box house; he’d given up the ghost when he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t easy remembering to give them water and rodent feed. Returning from school, their bodies as lumps of clay; where she’d left them in cages to play with sharp objects. Leslie would say, “Men left to their own devices, were like the hamsters she’d had as a child.”