No
Approximate Burn Time
He
pressed his heat into me
like
I was a ball of wax on the lip
of
a red envelope.
The
melting was involuntary,
a
reflex clicked into action
like
a switchblade cutting
the
long string of tension
that
dangles between two bodies
in
a seedy midnight alley.
The
act of fucking
has
always sounded to me
like
something people who
hate
each other do.
He
licked my ear,
said
“There is nothing I want more
than
I want to fuck you right now,”
and
the word in his mouth
rose
from the ash of the obscene,
a
delicious tongue of fire
curling
up the wick of my spine.
Weeks
later, alone in bed,
I
can feel the darkness
he
left under my skin
when
he pulled away, cold
as
the secular moon that drags and folds
the
ocean into its own frozen depths.
He
dressed without word,
eyes
shielded from me
as
though I carried the sun itself
between
my breasts, in the place
where
my heart pounded, volcanic,
hard
enough to rush those hot,
vicious
circles of blood to my cheeks
where
they flamed for days,
like
Rome each time it was left
wrecked,
emptied of gold.
There
Is No Standard Protocol
that
has ever been issued for the act
of
telling the people who love you
something
they do not want to hear,
when
rivers and oceans
have
stopped being beautiful
and
have become nothing
but
places to drown,
when
the smell of earth
after
a heavy rain
is
a graveyard at dusk,
a
gallery of open mouths
waiting
to be filled,
when
the sound of rustling leaves
becomes
the shuffling of feet
in
a hospital waiting room,
the
whisper of long-haired women
weeping
in green hallways,
when
love becomes despair,
heavy
as a thousand lovers
with
a single face
all
balanced at once on your chest,
and
your heart is a bluebird
too
fat and tired to fly,
when
you are brought to your knees
in
sudden, desperate prayer
to
a god you do not worship
by
the sight of an abandoned
black
sweatshirt hung
like
a holy relic over the back of a chair,
its
limp arms tangled together,
dangling
before you
like
a hangman's noose.
Trial
By Fire
My
biggest mistake was telling you
I'd
never learned to swim.
Not
really. Only to tread water,
my
arms forever lacking the strength
necessary
to carry me to shore.
At
the water's edge, we cast stones
across
the misty surface of the lake.
You
take my hand, show me how
to
flick my wrist in just the right way.
It's
about control, you say.
You
grin like Alice's Cheshire Cat,
teeth
a-glimmer, as the sun sets
and
darkness is ladled over us
like
a thick, cold stew.
The
last time we fought,
you
called me a witch, threatened
to
take me out in your boat
to
the lake's black center, throw me in.
Shadows
flicker beneath the water,
and
I imagine the writhing hair
of
accused women, their denials
of
any wrongdoing proven only
by
the eternal, stone-heavy silence
of
the drowned.
You
believe
I
have been unfaithful, that my eyes
and
the eyes of your friend linger
too
long across the kitchen table
over
glasses full of wine at dinner,
or
in the rear view mirror of his car
while
he drives and I recline in the back seat,
my
thigh pressed to yours, my hand on your knee
and
Jim Morrison begs “Light my fire”
across
the decades in a voice
that
sweeps me into the depths of longing
as
swiftly as when you press me hard
against
the stake of a gnarled tree trunk,
hands
fumbling at buttons,
palming
my breast, teeth grazing my nipple,
your
sighs a song of possession,
my
body a conquered fortress
burning
under the red flap
of
your war banner, and I wonder
what
kind of woman
would
ask for this?
Because
I am ashamed
even
now to confess
that
you build a rage of bonfires
under
my skin, that
the
violence in you excites me
until
I am screaming
like
a bedeviled creature,
guilty
as sin,
going
up in flames.
Amber
Decker is a thirty-something poet from West Virginia. Her
work has been included in the groundbreaking literary e-zine,
Exquisite Corpse, as well as other hip venues for alternative
writing: Zygote In My Coffee, Arsenic Lobster, Phantom Kangaroo, Bone
Orchard, Specter Magazine, Red Fez, and Black Heart Magazine, to name
just a few.
She
is a lover of hooded sweatshirts, comic books, werewolf movies, good
wine, tattoos, and Miles Davis.
Her latest collection of poems, The Girl Who Left You, is available
from California's notorious Six Ft. Swells Press.
