. The Poet's Beat .

. The Poet's Beat .

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

I Called Her Dainty and She Never Forgave Me



Her clothes smelled like Louisiana,
Like her bed in that shabby ghetto apartment,
The intertwined spices of her world:
cat litter, shampoo and
     the previous night’s just-add-water
          mix of instant mashed potatoes,
The hour late and the airport an abandoned shell of bright colors,
An empty cavern of modern architecture and fluorescent lights,
Red-eyed passengers wandered aimlessly in a haze of jet lag,
     of solitude,

She was somewhere in the stars,
     lost,
A plastic bottle of cheap vodka between her lips,
Ruddy in the reflection of the business class window,
Until in my sweaty hand my cell phone buzzed,
     suddenly,
And I knew that,
For at least a little while,
Her feet were once again on the ground,

We drove through the darkness towards the city –
A densely glowing constellation sprawled at the base of invisible 
     mountains,
A wall of negative space marked where the stars did not sparkle,
Joking,
Laughing,
Her breath muddy with alcohol and lust,
Intoxicating to my senses,
My own skin warm,
Waiting eagerly for the moment when we would touch,
When she would share the taste of that jet fuel vodka
     in the mixture of her saliva with mine,

The open road of my wonderfully lonely boyhood behind me,
The teasing in those desperate months of longing
     now gone,
She was in my space,
My Denver nest thawing in the shadow of the Continental Divide,
The ear of her soul as open as it ever was,
Listening,
Yet my confession never came,
The shape of my heart remained unrevealed,
Lost thoughts,
Foreign words to my tongue,
     buried under the weight of fear,
My feelings denied,
Her heart forbidden to enter,
My lips with permission to kiss her hello,
Only,
To kiss her goodbye,
And to never speak of how badly I missed her,
That all important meaning of her presence in my life,
The joy in her smile,
Her laugh,
A heavy and unknown consequence,
With the ability to alter our course,
Those few hidden words,
to her,
to me,
     and then she was gone,
A turbine engine in full throttle over the Kansas plains,
A vapid smoke trail and a memory,
So that even five years later I find myself
     still struggling to admit the truth of those days.

11.17.09

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