It is not enough, is it, even if I could turn these wallshadows
into fruit, even if my body were the dark burst of blackberries between your tongue
and your enemy’s teeth, stain the bed sheets with your
lips.
Even if the way I touch you riddles the sunlight across the window; little flashes burn through the fog around your cheeks
the way we feed each other on this thin selection of time,
is this your breath I pull across my mouth, is this the rib I borrowed from the birds you hold in your hands (one is sorrow, one is freedom).
It is always you, you inside me as I
write what hangs from the trees in dreams. Who am I to hope for anything when the world is on fire. Who will they send for us if we do not emerge again. Love is on the drinking cup, love is on the fountain top, love is the bottom of roses gummed to shoes.
Take me with you into the familiar warmth, take me back to the way it was before, when I told the truth and you would believe me. You
wanted to believe
me.
Now it’s only the green mornings they tell me I should smile upon; they keep telling me not to blink, throwing hurricanes against my eyes, and raise my useful hands
up to the sky
(but it is hard because she’s falling
as I am falling, and we
can’t seem to touch)
and I’m so tired, there’s never much good in telling a thing when you are very tired. It feels so smooth and good to slide my fingers across these keys like a child digging in the dirt with spoons.
I remember digging: bending silver spoons in the soiled mouth of the mud. Fresh dirt upon the worms upon the smell of springtime, that was fragrance, that was mood.
The ivory scent of lilies-of-the-valley running along a chain linked fence, blacktop seething the coming summer rain.
Everybody wants to be so heavy, so full of metal skyline and mysterious things. What is that worth to you? Where is it getting you to summon up the truth?
The hair on your head still itches.
The gums you hold together in your jaw still bleed.
.
.
Allison Marie Conway 