Alone at Last

The duchess in the courtyard. Dress all cinched tight. While the jasmine pushes its dark fragrance between her breasts. Where the map is drawn. Where the destination confounds. Disappearing into a separate heaven.

Hand out. Palm aside. Making change in the smallest increments. Counting the ridges that differentiate quarters and dimes. Whatever it's worth is not what they would offer me for it. Dead cows still chewing their cud while the bulls look for other distractions and the grass grows over all those swollen fields.

That's not really what I look like anymore. Some somber child wearing the eyes of the old. That's not really what I want anymore. Know them so well that they forget who I am. Attach them like an antenna to my heart so that I can listen to what is happening in the world.

The lion in the washing machine is softening his mane. Wearing t-shirts instead of fur. No hunt tonight. Just spinning as if clean is not a paradox.

The bear on the stoop picking at the grout in the concrete. With claws strong enough to kill every weed, but why not just, let them live. For a little while.

Take what never would take us and let it fill me like an empty page. Until the words concede and the world has patience enough for all the plagues I find a necessity.

Letting every cell swim in the virus. This muddy pond that gnaws at my thoughts. With stones to throw and dirty toes I know the surface. The light that blinds it is not where I belong.

Below.

A distant, calming thunder lures me home.

Fetch me my throat. So that I may devour every moment. All over again. And prove to myself we were together, though we were always alone.