Face

Beautiful Vampire

How many years
have I waited
in this place–

no shadow
sheltering me,

no song
giving comfort,

only memory
holding me
in its closed hand?

Then one day
I asked a question,
threw it in the air

and there you were–
a creature, different
yet the same,

tortured by a demon
that has so many names
it thinks that it’s a god.

And so for you;

I’ll wait beneath
these paper trees
for all the sunsets left to me–
I’ll be the water in the fire,
the blackened stone,
the insect at the end of day
all leg and tender bone.

Job Description

I grew outside your
window. I came every
evening and knocked
at your door. I
kept watch in the
sky while you slept.
I was there, I was constant
and I was invisible.

I was the moon,
I was the shadow
in the field at sunset,
I was the red poppy,
the blue hydrangea,
the yellow coneflower.

This is who I was
and who I wasn’t;
I was all things
to you and I was nothing.

I will never love
like this again–with
such an open hand.
Remember when you
can remember nothing;
I was the song in the wind,
the flower in the garden,
the moon in the moonlight,
the memory in the forgetting.

Dance of the Elements

Ellie advances
and maintains
the gesture
matters, all
is in the glance–
the exact point
where light
travels through
air. To remain
feminine and
precise is
everything; this
is the impression
one must give
when alight and
void of genre.

Unrequited

there must be
more than death

we sleep eyes
opening only
to see each
other’s face

sweet face
a mouth
I’ve never kissed
I wonder if your
lips are warm

I cannot move
to put you
in your place
somewhere
beneath my heart

am I alive
to love so silently

they move me
side to side
and call my name
and I am lonely
in this crib of pain

between the bars
I see your eyes
and remember
when I was young
I knew a god

Homecoming

I walked invisible

among the trees.

I listened to their

flowers weep;

a sound much

like my failing

heart–all white

and filled with grief.

 

You never came,

no word,

if words were possible;

so I turned back

and climbed the

lonely road to

a place where

gods were waiting.

 

I held them off

the silver moon,

the starless sky,

the scent of jasmine

and found my fate

inside myself;

a darker plain

than most

but home to

all I love—

paper trees,

a sanguine sky,

a city by the

water’s edge.