A Place of Death

Let’s make this harder, he said,
taking the Rubik’s Cube from me, a puzzle I had almost solved.
It was his mantra, always, harder.
I let him place the triangle in my hand,
the triangle that was not a triangle, a name I couldn’t grasp.
Prism? Pyramid? A place of death?
The shape felt so good in my hand, as I turned it,
the colors reminding me of Promising Young Woman.
A film I didn’t like,
a film soaked in pastels, making the images feminine and soft.
And deadly.
Let’s make this harder, he said.
It was hard enough already.
It was time to put the object down.