Poem: A Memory (2012)

A tragic fable.

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A Memory

I still recall

The day she came to lie beneath me.

I pretended not to notice

The ocean waves

The wind made of her long, loose hair;

I could see she wasn’t there for me.

Firm-planted, I stared at the sky.

It wasn’t until I heard the laments

Rip-tiding within her

That I cast my gaze down

To where she muffled her sadness into the earth.

I made no sign;

I simply stood,

A stock-still sentinel,

That she might avail herself

Of my quiet protection.

She touched me as she rose,

Her scrabbling fingers finding the crags

In my rough and wizened skin.

I confess that in my deep-rooted places,

I curled with excitement and fear

At her soft attentions.

Lonely things feel such a thrill at being touched.

Without even giving her name,

She grappled me,

Clutching and grasping,

Gasping as her sobs broke over

Her poorly-constructed levies.

Did she know that already,

I could have lived

On her glance?

In one of my outstretched arms,

I rocked her,

Like the soft back-and-forth

Of a pond post-storm.

She clung to me,

And I naively planned

A forever of holding her.

She took in long, unconfident breaths

As the raging current slowed within her;

She no longer watered me.

I shivered

With a peaceful, whispering rustle

And supposed that this

Was how we’d go on.

I didn’t see her face.

Though I would keep her from stumbling,

I didn’t know she’d let herself fall.

The knot she tied with her tear-wet fingers

Seized me in a taut embrace,

And the ground

Seemed to wash out beneath me

As her grip receded

And she cascaded down

With a sickening wrench.

Even then,

With the life wrung from her,

She held fast to me still.

She rippled in the breeze

On the end of the death cord

That bound me to her.

I folded inside myself

And tried not to wither.

She’s long gone now,

But cut me open

And you’ll see the atrophied rings

That were choked

By her embrace.