Seraph and Ephedrine*
     or *colliding, and by ash

Blond rain, hot, braising a brunette burn.
The stage was taking turns when she turned up
beneath me; meek petite, turned out to be
a wishing well while I adored the ring-
song of another southern belle. "Fall in,"
our notes implored to me and I, delighted, did.

She astride, we twisted up in splendid
flow, the baby blue's and sultry auburn's
nightly sojourns. Tucked unknown inside
her chest's soft comfort, lazing, I'd wake up
and glow. Two autumn lovers racing spring's
escaping tide, colliding, and by ash besnowed.

Scottsdale found me prey in unbecoming
news of winter crimes. I learned of didoes,
sickening grit, soirees of summer scoring
lines and picking pits and nursing burns
and being crooked all the time. Upside-
downing and dying, still, I bided her decline.

Bushy tailed and bright eyed, I entertained
elides not all bright white inside. I climbed
Sioux Falls and foraged for seduction. Lit up
and afflicted? Fix: a sick and sordid
sort of wickedness, a Pyrrhic forfeit's burnishing
reduction. Spurred, I galvanized, ceased her ringside

and matured. I'd drift immersed in suffering,
so, and surface shown not shore or certain
earthen berm; soon I earned my sideburns,
emerging taciturn, eternally, to her. Beckons
chirped at first, then mewed, then roared, candid
advents went ignored, an epoch couped

with cruel and sober sword. I suppose
the years assuaged the ache enough to wring
my rage awake and tough; seeing the iodide
wraith herself, withered and rough and raked in
such concern, she saw me unperturbed
because I finally wasn't shamed how things had burned.

I was always proud of her suffering; her ruin in bedlam by design,
but burned-up notes and buried bedding didn't seem so tragic at the time.