Today, I finally spat out your name,
single syllables starting pointed and steely, harsh
at their tips but meander gently into curves—the
seed of a fruit, one ripened last season.
But last season was just yesterday, and I am
a miser in love. The melody of her name plays
as a maddening strum of your tongue—
the way you stretch it across a lovesick sigh,
have you noticed? Cocooning it with such tenderness,
awaiting her metamorphosis about which you
narrate predictions to me—the fool
who wishes those
elegant, confident, poised
wings of your dreams will
Guillotine my gaze, like the way they cleave the air.
I wish them to sweep into a distant world
your reflection,
the one that is dancing and falling off the
rim of a martini glass, a treacherous caldera…
the one I can’t save from being
entranced by the spotlights, from being
kissed and devoured by the intersection of a flare.
The jazz in the lounge is swollen with my passion and
I’m still the fool, and still the miser,
suspending a pointless hypothetical in the air,
its pendulous swing lunging my words out,
then in, then out again.
Perhaps it’s the alcohol and the scent of the stars—
they press me dangerously close to honesty,
brandishing a candour so bold it would
cement every plot hole I skirt around,
undo every reef knot you said, more than a sextant,
would save a seaman’s life.
Deeper into the night, the wine softens my edges and
your faults trickle away, with wine legs that
seem to mock my tear-streaked face.
You ask me of the plague in my mind,
the pensive swarm that shrouds my routine smile,
and I want to tell you that her beautiful wings did nothing for me,
but also
that love makes me a miser, a fool, a girl who
hopes that for you, one day those wings open wide.
precious 