Your melody, wet needle burrowing
in pleated fabric of my layered mind
rocked in the cavern of love’s scarlet womb
before I bore a name, I reeked with sin
and with decay. Nostalgia sharp and sweet
a lullaby of muslin, swaddle me
my love is rinsed and slick as marble tombs
as branches against pale breath of winter sky
my single gift bestowed upon the world:
a residue of craving. What remains?
my thoughts of navy blue and swollen lust
your pale fingers fondling piano keys
all love coagulates over decades
a father or husband, lover and child
like my father, hunched with ivory zeal
your stretched, impassioned palms yearn for octaves
this song is not only yours, but the song
of every man who waded in my dreams
whose skin remains unknown, holy, untouched
who left my thoughts damp, jagged, or enflamed
you sink down my body as a drowned stone
I swallow your sleek and silver arrow
so you thought you would disappear with death
but melody haunts, bleeds across the years
how can wood that plucks, that aggresses string
arrest the blood that courses through our veins?
I ask you: forgive the smallness of me
I am nothing, really. A wisp of girl
my one legacy: the drenched, pulsing heart
clenched and sobbing in a 9/8 meter
your refrain drips with the desire of stone
to bury itself in soil, water, caves
to sharpen the stalactite’s longing spear aiming at the earth’s cold eternity
Painting by Paul Evans
