I met my bare-legged love,
the one with the slender fingers and the starfish eyes.
"What is it like, drowning?" I asked,
removing her moonstone ring.
My thinking at the time was to restore her entire,
from a detail.
If I set out her favorite soaps,
would not her fingertips appear, to take them?
Would not her arm follow, serpentine, impossible?
Would I not sleep with her again that very night,
my returned heart,
my conjured desire?
The moonstone ring had tiny lizards traversing the band,
counterclockwise,
enchanted;
the stone itself so pale,
retrograde,
floating to one side in a blue morning sky
as I did in the pool,
suffocating on my very urgency to have her back.
"Dial it down," she said to me, filling her sorrowful, disembodied voice
with her familiar lazy patois.
The stars dragged themselves, too bright, over our heads
and then melted like pangs of conscience
or fading scars,
achingly final,
reducing us to ripples, my love and I,
spreading away from each other, vanishing, in spite of ourselves.
_______
Written using some words from a list. Thank you, Jasminecalyx.
Linked with Carry On Tuesday #186, where I failed to follow the rules.
awww. i want her back for you... :)
ReplyDeleteMy word, this is good. Down to the deepest hungry spots in my tummy.
ReplyDeleteThese are my faves:
""What is it like, drowning?" I asked,
removing her moonstone ring.
My thinking at the time was to restore her entire,
from a detail."
the description of the ring
""Dial it down," she said to me, filling her sorrowful, disembodied voice
with her familiar lazy patois."
the last two lines
It was inevitable, but that knowledge doesn't make it any less painful, I'm sure. I hope you both can swim, or sink, well.
You are so good that my eyes did not swim, but hu truly savored each sy la bul. Props and aloha
ReplyDeleteMoonstones used to be my favorite stones.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely poem to come home to, Shay. Thanks.
Just got back from seeing The Hobbit, and tried to imagine the Dwarves singing this in their droning style. Sorry...can't seem to get this movie out of my head.
ReplyDelete"to restore her entire,
ReplyDeletefrom a detail."
The entire premise is just brilliant; then, you flawlessly execute it. Damn, woman!
One of your best, most sorrowful songs of longed-for love..........I do not know how anyone could possibly resist!
ReplyDelete*sigh*
ReplyDeleteWhy does it have to be so damn hard? I think I'm going back to my den now to lick my wounds.
i'm gonna follow Kerry and beg for room in her den to just curl up in a ball and weep...
ReplyDeletegod, this is good, Shay! and by good i mean extraordinary and perfect and... and... well, there just aren't words to describe it!
♥
happy almost new year!
Just beautiful,Shay.
ReplyDeleteDelightful, melancholic and moving. With pieces like this you are more than welcome to break the rules at Carry On Tuesday any time you want to! Thanks for joining in.
ReplyDeleteAs always, you manage to infuse every word with a delicate substratum, making yearning palpable, mapping the geography of love and loss with a cartographer's skill and detail. Here the metaphor is perfectly sustained, and evokes the sense of reaching for things receding, even as the stone of it all plummets into the mind's/heart's still pool, continuing to ripple as it sinks. Beautiful work, Shay. Both a pleasure and a bit of flickering but exquisite pain to read.
ReplyDeleteGood golly, Hedge. Yeah. What she said. What an awesome comment!
ReplyDeleteThere are RULES for carry on Tuesday?
ReplyDelete