Fiona Read Single →
I’ll still remember the big amber traffic light
beaming on like a wristwatch of worn out gold
flickered over a brand new forehead—the obsessive religion of a man
practiced on his second wife.
That very day was its own early glance,
the side streets brimming with the diminished population of below average living.
You felt that had the weekend been a place
you could visit every Autumn morning ,arms loaded with seasoned breeze
But you were never actually woman enough—the outdoors were, in fact,
a door to a last husband—a blissful grief,
and carved a trailing scent of sorrow
where the blue-green rivers had meetings with mossy oaks.
Sun had fled the blunt rocks
to suffer them a black fate of crescent moons
scrubbed by quartz, amongst other rare curses.
Mist didn’t care to touch its caves.
Shaven bodies lying, glistening as rock should.
Fire and water. Did you forget that we’re real?
At least find comfort in the hole of his home.
On woken nights the floods threaten the side-roofs
and drench the next room but the window perseveres
in a cloud that never breaks, at least not for a while.
And you’ll forget he can be a father but not a man
to you or the woman in pink, in bed in her grave
Under the last painted sermon of magnolias,
magnetite teeth clasping the roots
with the same rogue kind of passion
your maiden self always expected to find.
Sweet satisfaction in the tears you bring home.
Years of flight, hugs so tight
Even your heart’s imagination couldn’t still the wakening night
nor beacon nor height nor voice that tells you good night.
