Your Leaving Vienna with the Hapsburgs

Just as the sun fell down, you slipped out behind the slinky cat. I think
his name was Jinx, but I'm positive you were wearing a summer dress, so
it fell because the moon rose and the hellcat wanted it that way anyway.

The waiters were playing tennis, just, intensely. After-hours, the game
was still Love-Love, so the strip croquet began. But you might have been
thinking of something else. I lost your trail for a minute riddled to stitches
by my watch, wondering without thinking why all swings were in
reverse, if the lawn would ever be the same again after such follies, if the
cat was definitively haunted.

But I came to my senses- I followed a trail of cyclamen that fainted as you
passed. The spring was astonished by your genius and the fruit was
served with drippings of border-lace.

I found you at the Sudbanhoff. I headed east while you headed west, to
trick them I'm sure was your plan, to meet in the middle in just a nick of
time.

I remember- your croquet dress, the myth of its virginity and the way they
shipped it back to me in your old straight-jacket. I remember it all- the bad
luck cat's fault, the escalators going haywire, the trains going separate
ways to catch us in the middle of it all.

Copyright © 2009 Jason Spear All rights reserved
from Arsenic Lobster
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission