She
wears
eternity tattooed
on her wrists
to hide the fractalled
mysteries of vein
and luminous
fragility, tracts
of yesterdays
that slide
beneath
tomorrow’s surfaces
like subway tunnels.
She knows
secrets:
when to
dance, where
to run,
how to
fly but
she
won’t tell,
ever;
keeps her smile
wrapped up tight
in shadow and
in truth
she
looks best illumined
by rooftop neons,
mirrorless and
deepening;
her eyes
change color
in the sun
about to
set,
the heart
about
to jump.
lying
hidden below the city where
words sound hollow,
your promises reverberate
off the underside of my
cheekbones, slip past the left
internal jugular and graze
the nerve sheath tying my eyes
to my ability to reason. i blink twice,
blankly, flounder a little on
the stonework through which our
footsteps echo, trying to connect
to the back of my head and that
tiny spot of cortex recognizing
truth from shadows; a place where
secrets were made to be kept.
dirty laundry
they are
of no consequence,
the little secrets
i hoard cupped
in jealous hands
because
when given the opportunity
to use those self-
same hands to bring you close, i
absently tuck them away
like old receipts
inside the tight back
pocket of my careworn jeans,
finding them only
incidentally
weeks later, crumpled
and incomprehensible
in the wash.
tunnel vision
i have buried my secrets
far underground, left
their evidence in the same
dark corner where i
abandoned my day clothes,
my pretenses and my decency, but
i keep my virtue wound
close and tight, a thread threatening
the circulation round my left wrist,
reminding me of a lost autumn air
or a late summer’s mourning rain,
soul myopic in the dawn-light of
memory, unwilling to forget;
unwary of its step;
hardly daring to breathe.
as the year falls
the scent of secrets
lingers and i crush dry leaves
consciously underfoot,
listening half afraid
to their whispers of what
the darkness might bring.
