"Easy," she said
careful with my reigns
fragile and thin
they are;
I am 
a close call away
from broken

Tears could fill 
the pond we're waiting in
close to our knees
and climbing
a slow and steady rise
to swallow our reverence
in a baptism
for the window I shattered
to reach this accumulated
pane of natural wisdom

She travels with others
she said "I sing to the wild."
Inside her voice box
she shakes her melody.
Inside her heart
she pulls the handle
to gamble
on a chance.

She is wanted
"I am in every need," she said
sipping on her tasteful reality.
Not so bitter, not too sweet
her climate
is a gathering of heat
and Africa is dancing in her name.

"I could swim across the Atlantic
and still drown in your tea cup."
She would,
Her lips are cracked & weathered,
for the storm bites the gentle purse
of her sweetest kiss
It craves the color of her cheeks
without the bliss of knowing
that the fire 
in her face
is famished 
from the almost and
supposed
indescribable faint
for what she 
cannot imagine
to hold
only that she might,
"One day."

Carefully careless
she is the mother to a temple
most cannot enter
and she covers up her center.

Occasional dust
collects about her
****** Mary-
Her Jesus Christ 
is high
a place
where grace could carry and
afford her capability
to measure
what she wants-
an old testament
a constant pulse
that dictates
her deepest pleasure

Subdued
By judgement-
On a bridge she is most cautious 
and yet her marriage to the boards
is aflame and constant

A born lover will not question
the motive in her blood

relation is a
mutual interest

Her consequences
are rightfully under
the moment
she decides to harbor
what she would
be to only one
and not to three

There is the self
There is the other
There is the lover

THERE is
Everything she ever wanted 
and the pain of
holding out a half scared hand
to partly understand
the grasp on what she longs to give
for why she gives to live

Yet for both
she tears the lining of her blouse
open wide, behold a hungry beating heart
be its distance at her side
for what she would do,
oh what she wouldn’t do,
to have it ALL

A slipknot and two wrists
A tug of war
and four fists
stretch her beauty thin
within her tangled birth
to friendship and to woman

A child to herself
a moment left to chance 
guard the light
watch the weight
troubled appetite at stake

This is her way-
but do not bother 
to remove her only power-
it is protected
a fortress and a tower she’s erected

With delicate strokes
she may let down her hair
but the windows height is one
most cannot bear

If one should see
that two and three
could call her name
that each could climb a braid
the very same
the pain that she endures-
as both now
pull her hair
this pain that she would separate
in two is that which
burns at any cost
for both of you

be gentle
her fragile state is naked
it is a state in which three butterflies
could break it

she is lost inside the maze
that’s been created
from the depths
of which the universe is weighted

This is the absolute
and beauty at its best.
It must be free to fly,
not caged in an arrest.

In all that isn’t
may you find enough that is
for you will never find 
another one like this.

She is, the Evening Star.

written by Geino Äotsch
for Mishelle Dawn 
2003