MNEMOSYNE

 

i fell in love with the delicate curve of her neck,
faint and lithe as a flame writes itself into the cracks of souls
as if an angel wet her finger in the clouds and painted a scene
of doves in the belltower of hell,
moon children with phantom masks that make the world tremble with shadows
and their black despair

i crumble when you touch my tears
i can smell funeral orchids curling in your hair
skull pregnant with the snowy ashes of memory
that can only be reborn
in the dread chimes of eternity, twelve strokes at midnight, twelve songs
a child laughing somewhere very far away, smoke filling the room
and moving her lacy hips
in time with dying

i watched her from my window she had white victorian birds in her hair
and i could do nothing but smile softly without a face
as my shadow formed the silhouette of a phoenix
her face was bone china and without movement
but her eyes burned
i saw the black and dreaming ocean of a parisian silent film through them
bloated with cracked roses and mirror salt
she walked into the sea
and floated forever away from the light

but i knew she was writhing with the shadows and sea dandelions,
lighting beautifully the skeleton of a beast
with her swan plume of death and life and everything in between
pearl laden mermaid hair and flowered moss matted to my thighs, i was carried to a beach
littered with gray diamonds and apple cores and longing
i floated with peacock feathers glued to my eye sockets
i saw with the palms of my hands and the murmur of lightning in my chest

i bloom now only in memoir shaped regret
slumbering only when the stars die on my spine just so
feigning the deference of wings,
plagued with nightmares of being happy that mold the pulp of my lips like clay
when i dream, i will dream only
of that fateful ride to the coroner's office,
her skinless paper doll face
my last poem penned on a cold february morning
before the sun had risen and i could feel my blood

i wrote a requiem for her,
blue veined and masterful
the sponge that sucked the life of the last lingering vines of my flower bed
in hopes that her blood chrysalis would find wings
and flicker sometimes in my peripheral vision,
a soft cool hand pressed against my feverish brow

i go to my window every morning hoping i'll find a cocoon
or a hairline fracture in the clouds
i torture myself

you refuse to think of me or or even haunt the crumbling labyrinth of my thoughts
spanish lolitas, dried red flowers pressed in between the pages of their hair,
disappear around corners i never knew existed
and minotaurs scream with savage mourning, skeletons of clouds chained
to the wall
my skin still smelling like yesterday rain

so i will think of you as a broken doll
heart like a blue bird dying in your chest


i will think of you as me