Piercing

First they pierce your ears

burden your soft lobe with heavy jewels that hang

wrap chains around your neck

fit a band around your finger

then the final piercing

unquenchable

always to be filled

always to be completed

by a man 

Perplexity

You went back to your pen so quickly

You didn’t shove the books off your desk in anger

You didn’t lose sleep

Or bang your fist on your blank papers in loss of words in absence of muse

You went on writing verse after verse, painted feeling after feeling

You were flooded with my gone-ess

While I, a shattered glass vase; lay redundant on your sill

My myriad pieces dumb; reflecting the rain falling on your window

Perplexing the clouds, I shimmer in the very little sunlight;

in hope I will someday feel.

Embraces

How is your beautiful heart?
I think of you on this dull grey morning

as I winter my coffee with sugar

and cream.

I think of you on this cold lonely evening

as I stir the thickening soup

sending you a thousand unspent

embraces.

Broken people

A blind moth trembles inside the lamp shade above my head,

its paper wings flap violently, desperate for an exit,

trapped in the illusion of light.

I am trapped in this cognitive skull

always looking through these two sockets for an alternative

I leave the light on because I haven’t finished looking

I can’t close my eyes because I haven’t finished looking

when my sadist past makes love to me, my feelings don’t belong to me

its breath hastens and with a final thrust it cups my breast and whispers

broken people are drawn to broken people my love.

Who sleep alone

I don’t claim to know anything

other than how night obediently tilts its head to morning

and life in its endless week never tires of opening and closing flowers

for those of us who sleep alone and set one plate on the table

laughter has a different meaning

to us the sound of one fork clinking to one knife is reason

to us the stillness of the moth on the wall is a second shadow

to us memories are either before or after

to us the ticking of hours grow louder after midnight

we lay in our coffin cold beds repeating

age is but a little box in which we press ourselves

Absence

The wind often carries your voice

enveloped in a dream

sometimes the shadow of your arm reaches out with mine

in a trivial gesture; when turning off the lamp  

or closing and laying down a book

I wish to unwrap from your caging murmur

to feel the gentle falling of night

only you can touch darkness 

put the twitching flicker of candles to rest

next to me you lie

always in your absence.

Celibate

Celibate, she lives in one country

and calls another home,

weighing the dearth of options;

be, or not be with a man?

Her female belongings

even in number, not in worth

divided

between two continents

loneliness and alone.