As the summer slides
from my hips to my thighs
I cannot tear myself from thoughts
of your wild-cat eyes.
How your hands would caress
with such deftness and
exactness
traversing my
buttresses and valleys
as one who has known a land
since
before memory began
not a step
mislaid
you find my secretive
sun-filled glades
bring forth lakes
where once there were none
til the whole mountainside
crumbles and trembles.
I was trying to remember
the first time I said
I love you.
Humidity and a summer night
and sweat of bodies
pressing together
ecstacy taking flight
opening up every pore of pleasure
every tingling
sensual receptor.
My reserves of sadness
a sea-glass jar of tears
shattered on the rocks.
I wanted to be carried away on
that tide of yours
so I clung to you
asked you never to leave me.
If my words are playful
yours are masterful
you take dun threads of reality
and spin phantom worlds
that I want hide inside
flee from the mundanity
that we both despise
you’re a composite
of contradictions
somehow there’s truth
in your lies.
How to not be together?
When we’re quantum particles
and one’s actions affect the other
even at a distance that
only the light of the most distant star
can traverse.
No one can explain this poetry of physics:
how when you stub out your cigarette
at the polar end of the city
the cold ash comes to settle on my heart;
how as your eyes close
I fall asleep,
and dream of you
and when the hot core of your doomed star
burns out
not a spark of your energy will disappear
but will elide into other forms
maybe I’ve already had my
fair share of your light
lending my moon
its sensual glow
Why can’t I let you go?
Read more —Artemis Bronstein
