The sun is violent.
He splays corpses of your fingers across
My lips;
Blurry gray scars spear across
My face
And the furrows grow deeper
As the day ages.
We are drawn in graphite,
And time is smudging Us.
Your kohl’d brown eyes
have
Cold, mischievous tiger-tints to them
That I have never seen
before;
What defining,
independent memories are they
In possession of, that
they hint of such
Depth?
Your tresses still fall
on tip-toes
On my chest, my neck,
my face;
Curling, burning tongs
that tease!
Yet if I look closely
enough
I can just make out the
flecks of maturing
White, where there was
earlier only stubborn
Solidity.
We are drawn in graphite,
And time is smudging Us.
I am caught in the
rainbow-strings that
Are woven in-between
your refracting spectacles.
I used to shimmer
effervescent in
The levity of the twin
mirrors they shield:
Now I can drown myself
In the liquid
complexity of my rendered reflection.
I can see myself, and
Then you again, and
then me again;
We’re locked in the
infinity
Of a shared look.
The sunlight finds
relief in
Depressions that
weren’t there before;
Ridges that were full;
Confident laughter
where there was unsure timidity;
A measured step where
there was puerile unboundedness;
Layered inflections of
speech compete on your tongue; speech
That was earlier
unhewn, and now bounces
On polished wheels.
Wrapped in the cocoon
of our minds, we
Are changing.
I gaze in wonder at
this woman
Who is the living image
of the gurgling girl
I fell in love with, so
many sunsets ago.
We are drawn in
graphite,
And time is smudging us
And is adding new
squiggles
And shifting colour and
definitive
Lines; we are changing
And it shall take time
to learn how
To love this new person
– maybe a
Day or two.
And then we shall
frolic in each other’s
Minds, as we did
before.
…
I kiss your concerned
lips as they ask
Why I look so
thoughtful, and grasp you in a hug;
Maybe if I hold you
close enough, for
Long enough,
We shall diffuse into
each other
And fate shall grant Us
amnesty.
…
Your house catches
fire,
As the sun gloriously
climaxes
And orange juice spills
all over the linen of
The sky, staining,
And the world burns in
frenzied animation
For a few minutes,
until the night
Douses everything in
cool darkness.
