The Dreaming Woman
       

You are not an injured angel, side bleeding.
Not a muscled demon, finger curled. Just a man
who had the beautiful hands of Jesus.

*

Oh, anti-miracle. Oh, blind hunger.
What freedom is a yesterday unfinished?
In my mind we become two swirling insects.

*

I impale myself on these thoughts.
As if the act of thrusting myself on your memory
would force you from my blood, my cells.

*

Forgetting is spinning the globe backwards.
I pile the memory pieces of you on a plate.
The dishwasher won't close. The water is cold.

*

Fifteen years and I'm translated into an unknown language.
Fifteen years and the water that touched our hips
has circled the globe. It waits for us near Malaga.

*

Do you taste older? A certain shade of gold?
Gold pears, cheese gold with the rind of living?
I hid your picture years ago and now the shoebox is empty.

*

Somewhere a branch brushes your shoulder. Under moonlight?
A tree drops her dampness on your cheek. The morning sun?
You are lost to me. A chair thrown in the ocean.

*

I am a series of intentional accidents.
Each day is a dry pine needle. I am filling myself
with old tickets and olives and outdated calendars.

*

Sometimes I lay with my cheek against hardwood.
There is breathing in the wood; it enters me like a splinter.
I would not misplace you again, would label your neck in black felt tip.

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Copyright © 2018 Paige Riehl All rights reserved
from Suspension
Terrapin Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission