I laid you, bare.
I sealed you. To see you,
dressed without dare,
adorned without honor
to these eyes that stare.
All those rooms
to empty you,
with these paintings
to represent you.
You fade in a bedtime
of shadows,
taped to the ground.
Black dress
pinned to a wall.
White corridors
with blurred photographs
capturing your wails.
I trapped you
to refer you, to inter you,
to wait until you hear me
trickle you towards that edge
where a sunrise
cannot be.
What waterfall? What
heartbeat can be
most abrupt? Your loss
of blood, in a bedroom of
silence. Your violent
tosses to see what,
not who, will bring to you
false roses that do not
ever mean to wilt.
Do I wander in your heart,
like all of time’s limping walk?
I felt your pulse,
I changed your clothes,
before I allowed a garden
to grow for both of us.
I felt I had
changed you from
sadness into sunlight.
I swear I had
not kissed lips of rust.
Here, being left
to fill in those gaps
with stains and overlaps.
Here, to sleep
in curtaining silence.
There, continuing to weep
while mourners shoulder you,
winding you back
to those same familiar,
departing tracks.
Do not find me, under rain,
heavy with pain. I will
discover a different bridge,
another river
to embrace another nakedness,
to expose fleshly emptiness.
Modern Romanticism 