Withered Away
The sound of you is the sound of winter,
slush ice like a false shoulder, iceberg a temperament. I figure
you grew up in a shipwreck rolling in domestic history.
There is something romantic about slamming doors open,
swinging a smooth move to the south, settling down in illuminations.
Your body blinks against a sea of tongues. You know you are back
on Clink Street when you evaporate in your boots. I am Milton
asking to end this matrimony. I am the silent silt around your ankles.
Please, wash me off before I turn into spit, shout against the tide.
I drown in possibilities.
Forget the flesh, a smile crossed like a fence, the shadow of my hand
on your famous hip. I am the grotesquerie of chance,
a mere trifle of temptation, the permanent cruelty of statelessness.
- Brigitte Byrd
Copyright © 2005 Brigitte Byrd. All rights reserved
from The Laurel Review