Something, and Other Unknowns

Golden Head by Golden Head, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

We lie still but awake, horizontal

on the antique bed we bought from

that old country in The Old Continent.

The moon hangs

over the garden, its

beams roiling like electric eels

inside the sanctuary of the artificial pond.

This is a night of flickering constellations,

and raven leaves cascading

in a deep lavender sky.

This is a night of quivering willows,

weeping, while they tease

the zealous clouds.

This is a night of hands possessing

a knowledge of their own—

a knowledge once thought forgotten.

This is a night of wakefulness, yes—

and anxiety,

and desire.

We look around us, searching

the darkness for something

we can never find outside of us.

Something calls us,

then falters like a bird in doubt.

Something hangs in the air

as if in the aftermath of

something… someone

awaiting last rites.

Someone, someday, will try and tell us that

blood is blue so long as it is unexposed,

so long as it is inside our bodies.

That is a lie.

Blood is ever living,

ever red,

never blue.