He is your unfinished novel.
chapter one -
a casino in Biarritz,
your mother's sapphire locket,
a beacon below your smile;
fingers cooly fanning out
a hand of baccarat
as he swears he would give up
his daughter's soul
for you.
Chapter four-
sipping Kir Royale
at a garden party in Mayfair,
a spare husband or two
wondering how you would look
dressed only in his wife's pearls
or a strand of diamonds.
The eighth chapter,
a train in Morocco;
the wheels keeping time
with your stories.
You're Mata Hari
when a stranger invites you
to the dining car
to share a dry martini.
And the last twelve pages -
the streets of Curacao;
I cannot remember
what she wore that night,
or the smell of the moon
at her wrist,
or the blur of her cheek
grazing the pillow.
I cannot recall details
of her voice -
what was said
or promised
once the heat of July
nested in the curve
of my tongue
and pressed back
her hesitation.
But I remember the shock -
the last tremor
of bricks and skin
carving an arc
into our breathing,
shaking the walls of her room
and the sound of the world
coming undone.
Death should be a glorious fiend,
an indulgent lover
who cradles your head
and feasts off
the slow twine
of body and soul.
He must court you,
run his long, cool fingers
from temple to spine
and count the days
that climb toward heaven.
He should caress
that cleft
behind your knees,
find the delicate shift
between flesh
and blood -
a music only he can taste,
and knead the supple
and smooth hopes you hold
and turn them into pledges.
He will love you
as richly
as you deserve -
that final lilt
of joy blotting out your breath,
his bleak and sinewed body
covering what lies beneath,
making the light
within your cheeks
Your words, they make me smile,
They make me cry,
Telling a bittersweet truth within a lie,
How you form them and shape them,
Like a promise, hoping no one will break them.
Your words, they make me grimace,
They make me laugh,
Painting a picture of a multicolored giraff,
The way they speak and whisper,
Just like a dear lover, wishing to be tender.
Your words, how I am in love with your words.
Through the Looking Glass by Poetrymann, literature
Literature
Through the Looking Glass
You're Alice through the glass
again -
mercurial,
and hidden from your brothers -
Jacob, sloe eyed
with words that stuck
to the roof of his mouth
and dirty palms,
his feet terrified of running.
Michael - drowning,
thick with dreams
and the burden
of a mother's troubled love,
his voice unable
to find its way home.
You wanted to stay a child,
and chase rabbits
through the garden
and wear a crown
to tea parties
like the other girls you knew.
Not play house
with strangers
and bury what you couldn't feel
deep enough to lose you.
This wasting illness,
her belly heavy
with my indifference,
weighs upon me
and sleep is a strange land
without a suitcase
or room to call its own.
Her skin tastes pallid
like something kept too long -
brown bottle bitter
and frail.
She stains my fingers
every time I reach for her,
her love medicinal
and thin,
as if wondering how
I put my shoes on
in the morning
or know
which air to breathe,
and hoping silence
leaves this pregnant space
between us
unbearable
and unknown.
He's dying
was all you said
leaving me to fill
in the blanks beneath
how can blood flow up
and not leave a mark
the frail biology
of hope
a tube will do
the breathing for him
his rise and fall
curled fetal in the sheets
the wound will exit
from his chest,
sterile in its waste
and oddly comforting
to us both
Just take his hand
you said
and whisper
that he's sleeping.
He wanted to be a pirate -
a rogue of waves and plankton
and teakwood decks
that smarted under the sharp rap
of stars streaming off the bow.
He longed to feel rum
cut the back of his throat
and hoist the skull and crossbones
over a ship so far gone
the horizon would never find it.
He wanted to chart winds
that warmed the equator
and let the anchor
carry off the ballast
in the boatswain's burly arms;
to watch gold
cover his hands to the elbows
and sink his lash
into the belly of the storm.
And know the beauty of his enemy
come calling late at night.
i fell in love with your architecture
the cross beams of your cartilage
how your tendons knotted over nerves
like girders, holding up your arms
and the supple curve of neck
a room unto itself
the doors and windows of you
opening
and each brick a voice
that resonates my mortar
the simple stairs of your legs
leading me skyward
where shoulders meet like corridors
and I find myself
taking up residence.