String & Rift

Originally published in The Hamilton Stone Review #35

You bet your pretty painted eyes
the smoke and light blended dusk
will rest it’s head on
your cream-colored shoulder
by the time this train horn
drains into white space.
The sky leaks and the wind
won’t stay in its corner.
This won’t be your
last disappointment.
This won’t be
the last time
the headless
night beckons
your naked legs.

So you come here
where they invented
the kind of dark that smells
of porcelain
and sulfur
or wet skin
where we can hold
our hideous nature
in glassy sparkle,
the perfect place
to attract.
Afraid our eyes together
could become hard
to touch, a tasteless mistake.
I am here and I am missing.
My kind of distance hangs
between two mirrors.
We can make our range
a two-way tether
that we grip
with our blue palms.