Se Souvenir

 

He expects her now.

Every time he turns a street corner

he finds himself breathless.

He has become a student of women’s lips,

and of the delicate curve

at the end of a nose,

the subtle discrepancies

in a nostril’s flare.

 

In the half-empty métro he catches himself

searching the reflection

of the woman next to him, a phantom

floating upon the darkened glass.

 

He asks himself why he allowed

the surgeons to harvest half her face,

while her beating heart still warmed

the body she’d long abandoned.

A gift for the woman savaged by a dog?

           

In dreams he sees it rising

from her sheet-draped body,

in a halo of its own radiance,

white and serene as a porcelain mask,

delicate as eggshell,

the only light in that black room.

 

Helpless he’s driven to her old haunts,

the marché aux fleurs, the bridges of the Seine,

until at last he finds his answer

among the tulips and daffodils

of the Place de la Madeleine.

         

A woman’s face, half-hidden

beneath the brim of her straw hat,

the tip of her nose familiar,

poised above the narcissi,

and in the red crescent of her lips

the ghost of another smile.

Reviews

[J. Thomas Parker]

excellent use of the english language.

the flow and imagery work nice together.

i love the unconventional topic as well.

fav. line - "He asks himself why he allowed
the surgeons to harvest half her face"

going in my favorites...