Have I crossed that line?
Where I should feel penitent for wanderlust of the impervious mind
I am
The same old mare with the fish net harness
Who left macabre red sugar traces
Up and down his boyish spine
And with a quick cut of the jawline
Could leave minions crawling in her high heeled wake
And never even blink an apology
The same dark beauty that could shake a poem from the tip of his precocity
And ride the thunder over seven deadly seas
I am
The dozing radiance
Packed in salt and crushed hope
Oozing chimeras which never bore fruit
But instead ran circles around the delusion of he
who
Could rock the sidewinder to sleep
with all the cunning of an evangelical priest
Who skinny dipped into the rushing rain with me
Where possibility bloomed and took over like dandelion dander
Blown from a childish lip through uncertain Septembers
I am these many faces
Worn from his neck like an ivory cameo
The same sinister whispers that resounded down cavernous walls
of ears I used to feed from
The spinster who had no qualms in tracing invitations around his navel
with a concupiscent slip of the tongue
And despite this pristine pedestal
This unfinished elegy I seem to have become
The blood still pumps
As warm and reckless
as it ever was.
–Erin Reardon