For the Girl with the Chipped Nailpolish

Impossible now to write down

the still center of the moment

when I was in your arms in your

breath, my soul a cloud-draped moon.

In the space between us 

there was no writing. 

The poems that scream daily

across the midriff of the sky had slithered

into slender recesses. It seemed we had lost 

the use for art, wrapped together

clumsily and posing 

for no hidden painters.

Though I pored over the calligraphy 

of your eye-corners, I could read nothing. In an old film

your life would be written there, penned lightly 

in traces of mandarin and Marilyn Monroe moles, 

but beside me you sat silent, full of stories that would

likely scare me. There was no parchment between us, no writing.

I could feel you had been captured in too many hasty poems,

fashioned poorly in mantelpiece marble, painted by those 

who would steal your eye-whites for their highlights. And I knew

that if ever my kisses began to feel like brushstrokes

I would sooner leave you forever unpainted.