Jewel of the Sierra

 

The door opens, heavy into the licking darkness 

And a silvery nature slinks past 

my repeated steps in the empty hallway -

The metronome of my curses to his world.

I am cursing me. 

My eyes still glittered 

cell phone light pinpricks

A rousing tide of drunkenness  

that contained not his voice. 

My eyelid shuts out the ringing of 

his laugh towards that 

Other, slippery - “come home with me.”

This silver apparition, 

this before self has been here.

Different bedrooms, different times

She, bruised too - 

The bridge of her nose plum-purple, 

Her vertebrate weave, speckled with this dust.

She holds me upright, together 

when I lay myself down in the navy sheets

Not pulled tight, or starchy clean - a bundle

Cast aside.

I turn towards him, 

With silver fingerprints across the bridge of my nose, 

On the inner corner of each vertebrate,

Purple blooms across my sternum.

I am bruised here, and here.

His breath now fermato 

is so heavy in evening that the exhale would crackle 

ablaze if my lips held flame.

His arm grows heavy against my stomach. 

I am small atop that mountain.

So little in the careless navy sea,

Pressed to the bottom of his King Bed- 

My voice lost, lost 

To the howling of his Time.