Alixandria Moore- Three Poems

Falling In and Out

We were built into a monument,

stones stacked into columns—

a skyscraper of limbs intertwined.

While finding a home on the backs of one another,

we became a collaboration of souls

until we were strangers to ourselves;

our legs still attached. 

Rivers of people rushed at our feet,

flowing into one another and

into us—

but you aren’t made of stone,

only flesh disguised as the immovable.

You handed pieces of yourself to the willing;

auctioning off your marble limbs and cement organs,

even plucking the clump of

pulsing granite from between

the columns

keeping us intertwined

until I was standing alone.

I’ve been looking for you

underneath the cracks of doorways,

in the pockets of strangers,

from rooftops to alley ways

but you have become a currency;

traded for bread and milk,

to those with a craving.

We were built into a monument.

Kissing the sky

above the stream of  people.

I just never thought

I’d have to see it

fall.

The Sunday Night Before You Left

The grass was crystallized from the cold,

clinging to the backs of our coats and heads.

We leaned into one another, into Earth

picking pieces of sky for our collection.

You told me the sky was made for holding,

because it held so many things.

The stars, burning still in the grasp of the sky

and the moon, a solid rock held captive.

We pressed our hands together,

as if when we let them sink,

they’d never find their way back again.

Leaning into you, into Earth

with pieces of sky in our hands

was when you told me you loved me,

and I believed you then. 

Ashes to Ashes

I am scraps

and bones crafted

from your skin.

My limbs are yours,

wrapped in Irish cream

freckled and pail.

My temper is yours,

sparked by the prick of a finger

or the whistle of a tea kettle,

burning like I do.

My hair, unruly and wild,

mimics the rough curls of brown

brushed back behind your ears.

I can fit in the blue waves in your eyes,

swing by the legs of smoke rings

spiraling from your cigarette

still burning in between your

middle and index finger.

You made a bed of the recliner in your

tattered country home with your arm

resting on a ketchup stain

that was matted to the fabric as you slept.

The smoke from the cigarette grew hungry

and devoured the carpet underneath you

until you sat in a sea of flames.

Fast asleep as the flames grabbed the

end table, lamp shade, pillows

on the couch, and eventually you.

The same bones that created me

scattered into ashes—

gliding through the clouds of smoke

and angry rushing flames.

I am in your bones, the crease in your lips when you

smile, in the red of your blood running hot,

and you left me swinging

by the legs of smoke rings

as they took you.