On moon-damp sheets, you slowly open my violet fig, passing halves tongue to tongue,
its seed-pearls, captive minutes embraced by our soft lips,
each velvet pulse a swallowed clock tick, unthreading the night’s camisole—unstrung
Our minutes take root inside our souls, night’s vines in green hour’s gentle grip,
soft pods burst open, figs too ripe to cradle our desires,
their wet seeds, exploring, ticking onward—dreaming of a solar eclipse
Dawn’s pallid hand already tests the window, sprouting its cruel thorns and briars,
we stack our stolen seconds like leaves against the latch, a barricade of lost cries,
yet every green minute bleeds to gold, slipping through fingers, we tire—
Seconds steep in our bellies like sour home-brewed wine highs,
bubbles of yesterday escape—tiny pale moons clinging to folds and hips,
drunk on recycled time, we speak only in overlapping echoes of whys?
One corner of the mattress folds like a calendar page—blank, stripped,
our shadows lengthen backward, seeking last night’s candlelight,
Dawn’s fiery glow becomes a vortex of memory and lust—we slip, hip to hip
A seed-shaped cog spills within; its milk is bitter sun, not honeyed night,
the soft ticking falters—our wetness rusts the teeth of fragile gears,
we press our palms to the fracture, bluffing the hunger of day’s appetite.
All swallowed instants germinate in rapture; green shoots flare wild from every tear,
morning slips through the leaf-lattice, feral, unstoppable—death,
the room sighs oxygen unearned; we wake leaf-littered, dewed, a frontier unclear
One last seed, caged behind the sternum, ticks backwards, waiting for breath,
it counts in reverse, each tick a small fist begging still to be loved,
we do not let it out; we cradle the echo, its name?
—A Terza-Rima Nocturne of Swallowed Time
