The Governor

"Talk to me about politics," she said after some silence.
"I'm not sure I understand what's going on."

He cleared his throat as if buying time—
listened to the whine of the connection, briefly, before continuing.
"Well, you see," he said, "it's like this ..."

But like what, he wondered—the dance of their separateness coming into relief,
like an Arthur Murray diagram, or, more accurately, like circling boxers, and him
with the longer arms: the distance wasn't constant, but it was always distant, always circling.

Terrible things often circled, he thought.
Vultures, hurricanes, Charybdis. Even the slow spiral of a bathtub, a sink,
pointed to some nether movement—to something in the act of being lost.

Startled by what seemed to be the sudden static volume, he said,
"It's just that there were competent candidates ... and then there's who we got."