Girl of honey

You have been in my mind

A very long time

I wonder how long it takes

For a persistent, returning thought

To gain permanence

Some part of me, an echo of some part of you

Even if one way, even if you have no idea, even if I am one of many

There’s something lovely about how I feel about you

As if I alone can see the greater things that make you

As if I had power to reflect you out into the world

Give substance to the emotion of being enthralled

A smile you cannot describe, a neck as delicate as a flower stem

From those secret recesses, an unfurling of more

I’ll never share all I see, when you aren’t aware of being observed, thinking yourself invisible

Or how many times you make me wince

Just imagining

How it would be if you returned

Even a tenth

Even a fifth of what I feel

If you could see me and long to

Wipe that errant strand from my brow

Take my hands in yours until they warmed

Cold hands, warm heart

Your mittens clammy with frost and body heat, you stand apart needing nothing, least of all me

In my imagination, our roles reverse

It is your chest that swells

In my proximity

Your blood rushes to your cheeks

When I look up into your caramel eyes

Eyes that remind me of sunlight

Poured through honey

Disapproving lips I want to touch with my own

It physically hurts

To think of you like cross hatches made with sharp knife on skin once able to be without

I could draw out my longing to lay beside you

Trace lines I am unfamiliar with until I know them as destinations

I thrive when you enter my heart and set it alight

Is it ever too late? Is it ever no longer necessary?

To raise you above them all

To need to follow you where you go

In the silence of time, you blaze

With my ever sustaining regard

Never as simple as; just something about her (although there is JUST SOME THING ABOUT YOU)

Not as easy as; do not take a chance

Hesitation has thrown herself away in fits

Made this the hour, I do something

To show what I always felt

Watching you then and now

Years in-between, no time, no space

Desire will be the last to survive

The heart is certain

Even as dreams may doubt their endings

We swim, eyes fastened on shoreline

The outline of you emerging, full and complete

Against ever changing background, your cruelty

Just a defense, used forever

Until there is no need.

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The internal dream

Your soft hair

grace

beneath the moon

I imagine us

light limbed

piano hearted

slipping from key to key

hands on my face

tracing soft accompaniment

I lead you onto oak floor

dancing beneath wax

and French 75 on your breath

moving to a hum

the internal dream

your arms curled around my waist

close your eyes

see ancestors walk

silver hammered

your mouth crushing mine

the oval and the heart

echoing across sound

no barrier

the unraveling trip of clothes

pressing against skin

somewhere ivory music slows

candles burn out

we can smell in the dark

hear the sound

of our mutual breath

as you gather me

as I lean and become

desired

She told me, don’t worry about it

We’re sitting talking about how we know

You’re making me laugh at jokes, about Hannibal

How I only like Gillian, because she’s a bit like you

And I can’t tell anyone, including you

You reminded me how I knew, I was still alive

In the video of you dancing, uncaring and wild

That’s how I’m reminded why

I know beauty

How women

Are the possessors of

All that is beautiful

With your downcast eyes, the color of absinthe

Hair falling in your pale face, cut cheekbones and grace

The switch of your merciless, marching intelligence

The sorrow, the humor, the passion lines

How you make me laugh hysterically and blush

Pouting, pulling on your cigarette, getting me aroused and nervous

Without trying, you command all attention

Your wit is sharper than a sword

When you didn’t talk to me

It was like a blonde flower, turning her lights out

The night was darker

Still I heard

That song you made immortal

The sway of your slim hips and secret smile

And I’m speaking to you in a language, I outlawed

Because he dirtied it for me, forever

But you sound so lovely talking in the fog

I know I have to stand at a distance, or I’d reach out

Grab the concentration from your lovely brow

But to be in your blazing aura

The tiny, angry, intelligent, firey soul

You inhabit like no other

You were the girl who woke me up

I’d give anything to dance with you

To that exact song, in those same clothes

Your then blonde hair, a chaotic wisp

The crunched concentration on your francophone face

There’s classic and there’s disheveled-perfect and you’re both

I’d take your hand and say

Don’t worry, I know the rules

But for fucks sake we’ve both been here long enough

born the same year

You got the small chest I always wanted

And you said you liked my eyes

Same color green as yours

Not narcissism

But sisters

Lovers of

Pain and hard living

We only trust those like us

Who smoked and drank and have to show on our tired faces, the weariness of living

Where boundaries are never crossed

But fantasy is free and inked

And you like being adored

I am good at loving

Sad, happy, gorgeous girls, with crooked smiles

Who hold my attention with their spark

Catching in the darkness like a skinned rock, thrown out to sea

On Brighton beach

Where we’ll always be young and beautiful

Me chasing you in the cold sea

You disappearing into green waves

Who shall love?

If you are not a beautiful creature

Is there love for you?

When the world appears bewitched by youth and eternal moment’s boiled to infuse

Who shall love?

Who shall love?

The imperfect and technically “past it”

When beautiful felt like;

The sound of heals clicking on marble

Then slippers

Then bare feet

Then silence

No attention for a certain shape, age, gaze

Consolation crows, grow your mind

Crack jokes

Have a sense of humor

Laugh at yourself.

Long before, boys fell in love with me first;

Because of an hourglass

A firmness

A tightness

A willingness

The measure of hips

And then later, aserbic wit

I say ignore the rules

Climb trees at sixty, chomping on cigar

Wear polkadots, rolling dice on roof tops

Make love in bramble hedges and countertops

We talk of politics and deep sea diving, the need for conscience, passion and chocolate biscuits

You didn’t need a perfect pair of legs or a tiny waist

Eventually you wanted a woman of four seasons

Who couldn’t hold her alcohol anymore and streaked across the lawn

A girl of seventy and four, mayflies buzzing in our ears

Who still beat you at arm wrestling and sang like an angel with grey hair

Opening her robe to your eager devour

For once upon, you were a youthful coward, chasing empty smiles

And now you lay in a woman’s arms marveling at her lines

The black and blue, and those she fought hard for, birthing children

Crossing her face like stars

More beautiful for their dance

On skin long past its prime and so fine

For a constellation is music over time

Then and only then, love breathes eternal