For Sara

Her voice wraps my body in cool recognition
That Venus incarnate has addressed my meager form
Slowly, she crosses her legs, caramel over cream
Little shafts of ivory light gleam through lips
Sweet and thin, like a peach slice.
She squints at her book
Two gentle whispers of hair
Furrow over fine black feathers
That cradle the most heartbreaking orbs
I have ever seen:
Drops of hazel green
In a snow-white sea.
Her jaw tenses, carved out of marble
And her small, spidery fingers
Run through autumn hair.
She is beauty, full and free
And she spoke to me.

Truro, MA

A summer that lay in memory's wake, still brighter than the melancholy squalls of tedious present, I devoured words that spelt my soul in detail, from sentence to serif, spilling from lips almost too familiar for comfort. Her breath was hot on my cheek, and she tasted of a rare, undiscovered fruit I had never known, and would never taste again. We spoke without tongues, felt each other miles apart. One night of bitter beauty, lasting an eternity, shorter than a kiss.

That was love, I know. Now I've shed naiveté and embraced the jaded faux-intellectualism and faux-maturity of faux-adulthood. And I could write her off as a hormonal pipe-dream, the ideal girl who barely existed. Still...she pulls at my mind, ever so slightly. The occurrences are less frequent, but I feel them in full. Were she mine, were we to escape the prison of time's grasp on that blessed meeting ground where sand met sea and lips met lips, were we to cultivate the freshly planted seeds of infatuation rather than having them cruelly torn out by their still-green roots, how would we have fared? Would we have failed, like so many of my generation do, citing love found too difficult to keep up and love unknown too difficult to attain? Or is there a sort of protection in blooming early, before twenty-something disenchantment can settle in and eat away at your tolerance for the one thing still beautiful, still fantastical in a world too old for magic and cliché?

From the Fringes of Familiarity

She's given so much to me

In paper dreams

Left kisses on the creases

Of my well-worn longing

She seems sublime

Regardless of social climate

Or clumsy dress

I paint her in broad, lush color

Fix diamonds upon her essence

In hopes the decadence of my effigy

Will bleed through a stony face

To caress my fragile heart

Into vital love again

Oh! Break the lock, find the key to my trepidation

Cast the heavy doubt aside

And find the smallest piece

Of a long-lost letter

That begins with a look

And ends with a limp

From my fractured frame I write this ode

For the coldest shoulder I will never hold.