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I stood looking at my portrait,
startled by all the things he caught in the caricature of me.
I was,
truly, larger than life.
The swell of my breasts,
the curve of my hips, the haphazard of my hair.
The beauty in absolute repose.
My spirit unhinged from the force of chains.
A shackled beast making love to the air.
I knew then, people watched me discovering myself,
through the eyes of one who was my very breath.
He came to me then,
the boy who had been with him at the end.
Touched so gently,
so longingly,
with great need of a place to bury his pain,
my arm - his fingers grazed the goose-pimpled skin at keen attention of truths,
He looped his soft, strong hand around the crook of my elbow.
He said his name,
now I forget,
his eyes I will never,
how they seared through me,
down into my soul and found a haven there.
He told me what it was,
how it had been,
I was the one who would need the words - he knew.
And in the confession, the telling of that fateful tale,
he would release himself from alone-ness, shackle up with my brazen beast.
His words came broken on staggered breath,
the syllables fighting to connect
"He (break) (broken breath sound) was (exhale of agonizing air) calm"
he said -
"until the very end"
"breathe" I said with my eyes,
"hold me" I said, tremored hands clasping both of his.
My back to what was,
She/I loomed in the foreground,
8 feet of nakedness,
the tuft of hair in between my legs growing out of my shoulder.
I felt her there,
her red hair held up behind her head in come hither,
her hip cocked in a pose of wanting.
we shook, we three in unison,
I could feel her desperation weighing on my shoulders,
covered now in a pretty dress,
those wanton hips squared and fixed high,
on dainty feet in dainty heels.
The tale continued.
Such darkness and murk,
like cold mud diluted.
Communication came in garbled words that sucked in sludge,
people threw flashlights,
he sprung up from springs of need,
dove back down his hockey player thighs being tested by endless volumes of melted ice.
He did this a thousand times it seemed.
I believed him.
His handsome eyes drowned in guilt,
salt caked in the corners like a Boston street after too much snow, too much weather, too many crews trying to pave a reasonable way to work.
His eyes and mine.
"I should have been with him", I said -
"it should have been me"
Final moments together in the small pocket of air we should have gasped in together.
"You were with him" the kind consolation prize, the parting losers gift.
He looked, beyond me then
to the naked red head on the wall.
"That's you?" a question needing no answers.
We turned and held hands,
faces dripped off like a bad acid trip,
skeletal remains of people who were.
"Yes" I said.
"In the flesh"
In silence we married our pain on an alter of what was.
"You're beautiful" he said hesitantly - I was nude and raw and sexual.
"He thought so" I said - seeing the super hero gather her feminine awe, her raw power culminating in an arc, pulling back a tight bow ready to release a well aimed arrow.
"he is right" he said then, pinking the flesh which hung weary from his cheek.
I think I laughed then, knowing in the recesses of my mind I would never make love again,
"if you say so"
No space between his and mine, "I know so"
He told me that day, that boy of eighteen,
that my love had been calm and then screamed.
Panicked finally when his lungs burst for all the murk.
That he had hit the glass, kicked through the water to a steel frame unmoving,
a sinking treasure - mass and volume and math I can't do.
Then in the end all was quiet - like the womb.
He gave up the fight while they treaded around him, water angels, mermen with no fins.
The beams from the flashlights surrounded him like stars in a seamless night,
he sank lower,
became limp,
all that hair up around his open desperate eyes.
All these years later I wonder,
do you give up with resolve?
Or do you go quiet in a rage that needs no sound and motion?
Does your soul speak a language that transcends human words?
Does your body become pointless as you meet the answered end?
I arc, my neck back,
my dyed blond hair a mass of curls.
I position my hips in desire,
place my feet firm,
I let the chains rattle with movement,
my song...