Bride

I was white dough--

Eating off vacant plates,

Writing little notes on edgeless paper,

Wearing a bridal dress in the indefinite glare of afternoons at home,

Marrying the empty air.

Time ran down my back.

I was a dim bird in a wire cage

Hung from a silly, flat, make-believe moon.

You think you are as common as kudzu,

As ashes in a fireplace,

As spirits in transit, thick in the startled air of foggy dawn.

No.

From the moment I saw candle flame reflected in a drop of water running down your bare arm to your wrist,

I have been dying of a fever.

In a sharp delicious burn, I talk the most vulgar rot--

Devils blush.

Whores laugh and encircle me, their Queen.

Doctors renounce their calling, becoming peddlers;

Priests go blessedly silent at last.

They all know

To get out of the way of this thing,

But I,

I

Bloom within it

Like a saint in the licking flames.

Other desires were foxfire.

Now,

My fingers go up like dry trees whenever I think of touching you,

And I think of nothing else.

My hair is dark smoke,

I come out of my skin, I spread.

I have to kiss you.

I am your bride in a black dress,

I never stay home,

My appetite is obscene,

I write everything in my own warm blood--

Don't leave me this way.

Kiss me now,

Kiss me hard;

I can beg or demand,

But kiss me--

Then you will see how my gratitude burns

In the sanctified sin of the sweet-grace moment

Just before the satisfied sigh of dawn.

_________

picture: Amy Lee