// Temptress //

This madness is crowding in on the coffee and cigarette smoke, my limbs are phantoms, my limbs are nightmares tangled in long-legged night sweats,
I moan as the thrum of your heady scent
erupts like pricks of sedation at the back of my throat.
This was twelve nights prior to the loss of God, this was yet to burn away the clouds, this was crushed poison and weather vanes coming undone.
Blush curtains, floor to ceiling,
holding speech in the folds of their wrists
collecting dust and you,
tenderloin heart in your mouth, palms wrapped tight
upon the posts of my
alabaster
bed
looking up.
Hands fold, eyes fold, blind folds,
three lush creases line the hollow face
of our disregarded love letters:
one at the neck of the fold,
two at the waist of the fold,
three at the blood fire in the folds.
You touch me anywhere. Sound becomes lace becomes bone.
Pillow feathered patterns press my milken skin
as I trace the star stained desires in your mind.
I will breathe and you will breathe
and we’ll count
seven thousand times back
from eternity.
You and I
we’ve spent heavenly mouthfuls of time
swallowing the nights like knives.
They were
strange beheaded creatures
sliding hooks along
bare walls.
Folded, too, were the love made hours
into flesh, into tear drops, into fingers, into the soft curves of
dewy breasts, cream linens, elbows, skies.
I can still feel you say it against my chest, that pleasure always bent for me
the way of a broken afternoon on sidewalk shadows,
thorough, extensive, discreet.
Your tongue thirsty at my thighs and this somber light
between us
is a hallowed illusion of peace.
All the miserable gray snow
flung fast upon the ground.
All the cruel heat in your penitent eyes
gazing down.
This madness is crowding,
is crowding us in.

.