She was conceived gradually
a tender-skinned fruit swelling on the branch
timid sweetness, yet untasted
she ripened over months, years
born from the seed you planted
with your voice, with the language of your hands
in your absence
she sprouted, burst into full blossom, a fragile rainbow
today, she is a solemn flower
trapped in the greenhouse’s perspiring jail
roots straining against her clay pot
tendrils searching, probing the crevices of walls
cloistered in her meager room
demure, frail and slim-bodied
opaque as a February sky
emerging sometimes from the closet’s dim corners
behind a doorway, or clinging limply
in velvet drapery, a mute spider in its web
solitary and pale, dodging fragments
of sunlight in a dust-painted attic
shrouded, a medieval maiden in a tower
her body folded away behind stone and tapestry
on good days she is allowed to play in the garden among the June roses
and the primly sculpted hedges of boxwood
her hands are permitted few things – to thread a needle through cloth
delicate fingers to brush her own hair
slender wrists to strum guitar strands
anything that does not cause a commotion
she is an unresolved chord
in first inversion
sometimes I think she is without substance
translucent as a film of rain on pavement
other days she weighs me down, a little anchor
a heavy gem on a chain, enveloped between the breasts
she knows her every breath
is a secret
she feeds on images
eats pieces of your body:
the slivers of skin that emerge behind cloth
glimpses of your neck beneath the collar
the forearm within its sleeve
an arch of the neck
with each encounter, she flourishes
engorged with the intimacy of your body
the longer your absence, the more she wanes
often she starves
she suspects she is cherished
but lives forever in fear of abandonment
her mornings are spent listless
watching the sky’s shifting arc of light
listening to the rain’s monologue
on the windowpane
during long afternoons she hugs her knees
weeps noiselessly
on a narrow, winding staircase
whimpers echoing off damp stone
her most fervent wish:
that one day she can crawl out of the cave of my mouth
that I will lead her by hand out into the sunlight
enclosing her in a public embrace
for now, she lingers
feeds on thin wafers of hope
on the unspoken song of eyes
on your fecund glances
she lives in the whispered hours of the in-between
her life is ambivalence
she is always waiting
Inspired by Phillip Houghton’s “Lament”
J. W. Waterhouse