She let you go
Again
Only your name is different
And in leaving
You left
A lover's print on her breast
The only place you knew
She'd let you carve the name of the passion that you shared
Openly under her shirt
She supposed you wanted it to penetrate her skin
Into her heart
And found there's none.
Only your name is different
She is the same
So again
Alone
She marches you to your grave
In her mind the dirge plays loudly as she walks
She knows the words of this chorus of the world
They're her Beatrice guiding her in hell
Her parents
Harmonize against her
Her boss stern base
Ignorant of laws still
Divine
Man-made
She hears an alto
Her neighbor beating down the fences she erects
Against him
A soprano quoting a solo hides behind a pulpit
Who baptized her in waters that never quench
The other faceless voices know her too
Or so they say
For only her name is different they insist
But common nouns will do
Sinner.
She has made this trip before
And won't get lost
The lover thinks...
Until a certain concealed passion ignites nights
She makes room again to live a while
By putting away pictures she never displayed on the mantle.
Again
She becomes
The pallbearer of your moments
Only your name is different
Know
She has glued them inside a brown envelope fastened
Within a manila folder interred
Within the night table locked
Where she keeps Forrest
And her curious wine
Lest it should spill and stain her daily
life.
I sob the stairs
Feed the cat the bills the washing machine
Myself
In order of importance
This Friday's
Dusk descending
Wasting
With a glass of scotch and soda since
Everything's frozen
Red light won't blink no matter how long I stare as
Busy numbers
Leave messages for people whom I miss
Bathing or bathing babies
I move in circles
Turn off the TV listen to John read Marquez
And lose my place
Which seems to spin and spin until
I fall
In bed
Then lost in thought
Of how it was it is will be
Until it all comes down to nothing to praying to sleeping
I dream
With water swimming with whales flooded living rooms tidal waves on the shore
Holding her hand so as not to lose
Her in the rain storm
I wake up wet
Just sighs away from dawn and hear
What I didn't then
The counselor the psychologist the psychiatrist
Say
That's who I was and would be when
Dead
Still
I decide to find
The woman of my dreams
Whoever I am
But not today
Just can't
So
Would that I could hush those
Clocks about to tick morning
And save the dark
I know
See
Everything's clear in the dark
For courage
is not anything one's born with
Courage is not anything one's born with.
She stops to watch
The juggler
Waving his hands in circles
Eyes shut
And is reminded of the red wood wings of the cardinals
She witnessed her mother
Hammered
In place when she was young
Since
Beating the same air in desperation
Fast moving nowhere.
She is treated to his own private parade
Had he been looking
Pregnant women pushing strollers
Men burning their fingers with intermittently-red doses of nicotine
Children in the act of losing helium balloons and in losing their step getting lost
Everyone trying in his own self-centered way
Not to touch the moving
Stagnant man.
Unlike the man
She follows the pins with her eyes
The red lines around their necks tight nooses
Chipped
From having fallen and having been thrown as
Sacrifices to his frustration
In the air now almost free
Almost
Like in a high school senior’s remedial understanding of
Celestial bodies in motion
Twice moving
Around their axis and around some center.
The center this man
In motley
Who clearly stands smiling in red color only
Tight-lipped
Blind
Torn polka dot on the knee
The sequence lost
Who after moments and moments
Opens his eyes and blinks towards
The elevated train seeming to faint
In the distance to be falling
On the simmering highway
Cusses
Eight more hours he closes his eyes
Resigned
Continues
The pins the births the addictions the loses.
She closes her eyes
And sees herself in him
Resigned to her own fate
Stagnant
After exercising the right to be quiet
Nailed
To situations by circumstances
Groping blindly in circles for
What
That is just beyond her reach
And moving around some other center
Wearing the motley garb of daughter, neighbor, worker
Pack mule
Now torn
The sequence of her life
Fading
The smile tight-lipped
Thinking
This too shall pass
Screwed her
And left her nothing.
Until Erin moves her
Down the path to the carousel
Where secretly holding hands
They’ll go around in different
And still
More and more circles.
If you have enjoyed Adri's Poetry, then please be certain to e-mail her at Adri[at]sapphicvoices.com and thank her for posting her Work.
Click here for a list of all of Adri's Stories and Poetry at Sapphic Voices Authoresses.
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