It Eats at You

As a hard rain slashes down the windows forcing cold air through the glass, I’m reading your poetry in the dark as I sip red wine. Feeling the heady essence of both slide deep into my veins, I’m thinking about the way some people never really see the world which flutters at their fingertips at all. They have white eyes like marble, unmoved, stiffened shoulders. Bodies like corpses, shells. They cannot smell the sweet menace of a coming storm, the way that I can. And then there is you, rich, elegant, wild, impossible you. You see everything, touch each detail with marked attention, turning it over and over in your capable hands. It is evident in the words you select, and the words you do not. You are a master of choice, of precision, of pace. My bones react to your imagery, sensations flicker underneath my skin as you collect me easily, eagerly, breathlessly. Poet, sorcerer, hunter. I have spent many days alone studying, writing of the desires of the flesh, what the body craves. How many ways to describe the soft curve of a lush pink mouth as it parts itself to wet, suck, and give pleasure. But what truly fascinates me are the private needs which simmer inside the mind. What you tell me by not telling me. How you touch me by withholding touch. The human heart a glistening cluster of dark secrets you fold yourself inside. I’m not sure the world can ever hold us, you and I. We will never be satisfied, we struggle and we attempt and as the blind ones rejoice for the rotted nothing they administer, we crouch into our own shadows, make love to the sinister. Kiss our own knees. Lick our own wounds waiting for a dawn we know in this life we will never see. But when I sit alone in the stillness, late at night with candles dancing and curtains drawn, I bow my head to drink of you. I catch a glimpse of that burning rose gold sky.

8 Replies to “It Eats at You”

  1. Allison,

    You make it hard sometimes to pick the line or lines I enjoy the most.

    This one is as beautiful as it is haunting, “…waiting for a dawn we know in this life we will never see.”


    Liked by 1 person

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