Or, I Loved You.

The clouds did not look in any way oppressed that morning
when a table held teacups and saucers all scattered about,
Staining light brown on the fine bone china.
Scraping cutlery, cutting deep.
Leaves of a crisping newspaper thumbed through.
Polite guffaws and 'gentle' conversation.
A man lay out a map
at the table and smoothed it down.

Slurp, clink, ah.

Whips lash, sweat breaks.
     Backs break.
Skin glistens, brown grunts muffle into screams across millions of miles.
Lakhs of kilometres?
It's the weather that's oppressive, I'm sure.
     while: "Spices and gold b y  t h e  f i s t f u l,
                  get your bags of gold and spices here!"

Tea, poured into saucers from cups.
Thickly accented words, in a foreign dialect,
sitting oddly on strange, dark tongues.
Men that, years later, were imprisoned for keeping silent
Hanged those that did not.
What are we aping?, echoing in the streets.

Shattered cups and splintered saucers,
strewn neglected on the ground.
A heel crushes out a stub of ashy clove
and the bitter smell of stale coffee
lingers overheard.

The cradle that joins
your rough throat of stubbled skin
to the flesh of your clavicle
holds in it the earth's ends,
                                            (and the universe is contained
in the lengths of your arms).

It was dry and barren
when first we met, but
I have watered it
                            gently, c a r e f u l l y
every day, with my eyes,
and buried my nose in your chest.

It has grown, a lush
garden. Now, fuller than ever before.
             But it is my garden,
             do not forget-
I will twist its vines 'round your
                                             heart.

You do a simultaneous favour
To spiderwebs and fire
As they dance in your depth
And I skim across your surface
Skitterishly
Watching the blue flow up into blue
And the blue sink down into blue
Reaching fingers reluctantly down, and up,
Broken only
By the water-colour green in between-
I want to be the surface
That only I can break,
That holds the horizontal
Between you & your sky; I
I want to be within
And outside of your
Deep, light body
At once
(Till I can no longer feel the hot burn
On soles and blazen palms)
And then stay so until spiders
Build their home on my shoulders.
•
I'll stay still for them,
And you.
So you can make patterns across my arms-
Cobwebby patterns of (strobe) light-
And I will fly inside you,
Because you are my sky.
This is why I now only swim
Upside-down;
Because I feel like I am flying

The taller kids told her, fevered, in math,
Like they'd been telling everyone all day,
That if you swing all the way 'round a swing
It turns you inside out, the legends say.
She grew more and more excited
As every slow second passed
She could hardly count the moments
Until recess would come at last
She ran right out to the swing set
Didn't stop- she was almost there; she cried,
She screamed, with joy and fruition,
"Now my beauty will be on the outside!"

You are the only water left
in the world
when I cup you in my hands and
drink you in
But when I try to
grip and clench you
to pull you closer to me
or just hold you
you slip away and run out
through the gaps between my fingers.
You're a stormy sea I can't tame.
I'm an unskilled captain
but I've bought a new boat-
Let me be a blue raft and blend (bleed) into you.

Yourhandsyourfingersyourpalms,
Twined, a vine, delicate and proper
-The one point of softness in you,
I swear-
Around a cigarette that whispers its
Spiral tower wisps
Before it sizzles when you bite it
By accident (you say)
Before it whimpers, and gives-
The best way to die, surely,
To die on the pad of the tip of your
Finger protruding out your
Lovely balmy palm-
Look pretty fab I think! I want
To jump into them
So you can hold me so close
And I can crawl over, unsteady
On new, shortened (further!) legs
To the point on your wrist where
Your heart throbs the most
(And set up camp there).
In other words,
Be mine.

There's an alternate dimension beneath my left eye lid
And a parallel universe under the right.
They stick and cling as they swing
From lash to lash like twisted vines.
I see them behind my lids each time I blink
And enter their world for a moment