The Quiet Poem

 

This poem is for a boy who will never hear it

Because we don’t speak anymore

So he will never hear the secret hidden in the sighs and silences.

But this is still for him, this is still for you

And when I think of you I cannot help but think of cigarettes,

Of loose tuxedo jackets, of formal shirts half unbuttoned and the white wifebeaters you always wore underneath.

You are always on balconies or promenades, wind in your hair, smoke on your lips and between your fingertips, eyelashes strategically lowered, seductive smirk perfectly in place.

This portrait of you is permanently painted in black and white because you had so little grey, so few colors, just the bruises under your eyes and the turquoise you always saw through. Years later, I finally realize why you were always so blue. But I still don’t understand how the masochism didn’t get to you, didn’t break you. Because you were so delicate, with cheekbones one could break on and collarbones that collected rain, wrists smaller then my own. And I saw what you did, I saw all the smoke and all the wine, all the fast cars and late nights, I saw how you never once took a bite, I saw the silver and the red, for god sake I lay next to you in bed, and even though you never touched me you can’t say I never saw you. I am the only person who ever saw you but I saw you, I lay next to you and I became like you so you would know that I saw you, 

You laid next to me and you left me, you told me I needed something other then ice, you said go where the colors are real and true, go find a man the color of honey where you small Arabian wind in his hair when he kisses you, go find a man with muscles made from ebony, go find anything but me.

You left me instead to a girl who was as much the moon as you were sea, and she came and went as you used to come and go until the ebb ceased to be followed by the flow, and even though we shown like the bellies of fish on Sappho’s shores, I was drowning.

You left me and she left me and I became disaster

I always told you your blue eyes were disaster but you didn’t believe me

I don’t blame you, my lips tell lies when I’m in love, dust them on neck and noses like gold, like dust, like the sin I wear on my eyelids, the shutters half lowered over the windows where you can just see the edges of the dresses of my souls that I am hiding for you. Do you see what I forsake for you?

I became like you. I smoked too much, drank too much, drove too fast when out too late, got used to an empty bed and a frozen pillowcase, even got used to silver and red. I tried to be brittle and brilliant and beautiful like you, but what didn’t break you broke me.

I told you I became disaster.

But celebrations are seasonal and so are you, and seasons pass including this winter that followed you. You are summer rains that soaked the earth and disappeared in hours, a sky in grays you never had, promising me a storm with rain and your fingers in my hair. I remember that storm that I named ‘you’. This summer, that storm will never come. This summer will be bone dry. I feel it inside my ribs and behind my eyes and in the palms of my hands, each day without rain. And though this spring has given me my waking moments back, between days and dreams in that twilight gloaming time, all I can smell is storm and smoke and wine.