Aphrodite resides in my heart.
She has been there since I wished
with no hope of solution
for loneliness to be gone.

She did that.
She Did That.

My love is an ocean yet I
I keep it in the pearlescence
of a shell I found on the shore.
Does my goddess purse her lovely lips
when she feels my fear?

Fear
of vulnerability, goddess,
of your power over me.

What is worship without fear?
Awful, terrific, exposed
to the mercy of your torment.

Perhaps soon I shall meet another
who knows the ache of her in the chest
when we look into each other’s eyes.
I pray for someone who has an ocean
like mine, boundless and full of life.

Ah, then we could mingle our waters
until two oceans become one
and proud Aphrodite can swim there
guiding the currents to where they need to be.

She stutters on the threshold:
a sun fixed on the horizon.
Bodies susurrate as she wades through them.
A daily routine – but what are days?
The cavern underneath the world admits no light from sun or moon,
Sight granted by the fragile luminosity of the pale, pale once-alive.
She walks through the dead:
has always walked through the dead
will always walk through the dead
Or – her mother was life, is life, above –
She stutters on the threshold.

Clarity.
She no more meanders, but strides.
The sun creaks and groans, and rises.
Breaths short and sharp, she runs:
A tree, an illogical tree in an illogical garden,
In this illogical cavern.
(but this was before logic)
Hunger pangs do not slow her,
She is hungry for change, for resolution;
For conclusion to dim the gnaw of uncertainty.

A globe gripped in a quivering hand.
She peels back the membrane
(like the skin of the earth as it opened to swallow her)
Scoops a glistening fistful of rubies
And gulps them down,
Blood of the fruit painting her chin like a child at the close of October,
Play-acting, false horror, for the sake of cloying sugars;
Her eyes are not that of a child.

She kisses the mouth of He that stole her.
They ascend, hand in terrible hand;
He sits, gestures, to Her new place beside him.
With a smile of crimson certainty,
The Queen of the Underworld takes Her throne.

There once was a tiny dragon,
No larger than the palm of my hand.
She burned no village, stole no princess,
Her name not spoken in fear throughout the land.
She hoarded not gold, not jewels,
Cared not for such frivolous things.
It was memories she kept in her miniscule cave
She guarded with flickering fire and scrap wings.

I went to her cave in the mountains.
Stumbled on it, by mistake;
As I lay down my head at the roots of a tree,
By an obscure and secluded lake.
She emerged in her miniature splendour,
From beneath a nearby rock.
She let out a yawn of fire;
And I froze: in awe, in shock.
She grinned a needlepoint grin,
Beckoned with one curved claw
Into her miniscule cave,
I followed: in shock, in awe.

I peered through the half-hidden opening,
Only inches larger than my head.
The dragon spoke soft but thunderous,
And this is what was said:
“This is my hoard, young human.
This is all I hold dear in the world.”
And she handed to me a birthday card -
Some edges singed, some curled.

It had writing in a swirling foreign script
That seemed to be etched, not written.
“This is the love of my first ever crush,
In the days when we were still smitten.”
“Is this all?” I scoffed, “Just pieces of paper,
and wrappers and old useless things?”
Her doll-sized body began to shudder
With a judder of claws and a flutter of wings.

No larger than my littlest finger,
She was a smaller version of herself;
But still I froze as she perched on my nose,
To her, a sizeable shelf.
“You hold no value to memories?
Then why don’t you leave yours behind?
Since they strike you as being so useless,
I’m certain you wouldn’t mind.”

Now all my memories are scraps,
Shadows of what they once were.
I wonder if she kept them somewhere,
In that diminutive cave with her.
Notes from a wife I think I had:
About the shopping, the kids? The car?
A card from my parents, a gift from a friend,
A reason for this faint lip scar.
I try to keep letters, tickets, receipts,
Compulsively, I feel I must.
But whenever I reach for that link to my past,
It is nothing but ash, but dust.

I draw the Line in Sand.
My toes are brushing borders.
I feel compelled to forward step,
And yet I cannot cross;
The Line is as a barricade.

The Tide is creeping in
(it screams, it screams at me)
The Line is washed away
(i cannot hear it, cannot see)

It is gone.
And so I draw the Line in Sand.
This time further forward,
Always further forward,
Slow and steady,
Ever forward,
To the End I dread,
But cannot yet escape.

and then sometimes the waves come crashing in and
there is no Line – there is no Sand
and the swirling water engulfs my swirling self and steals the breath from my lungs
and irrational clarity pierces my hummingbird heart with icy claws
and in my desperation –

I draw the Line on Me
A Life Line
To keep myself from crossing.