Photo, Aaron Draper
Sometimes I stare at a window
or a door, trying to make out
the phantoms that stalk it.
Do I think I can decipher
the missing glass
if I look hard enough?
But... have I ever told you?
I have never told you about
the time I heard your voice
like a blunt knife twisting in my vitals
whispering to someone
something I had asked you
to hold tightly inside you.
Something to be kept sacred,
moist with blood and tears—
my relic, and yours.
And I always thought you innocent.
How speechless my disbelief!
But I heard the manic
thunder of transgression,
as if from an impending storm.
And I felt the window quake shamelessly
before it swung wide open and
s.h.a.t.t.e.r.e.d.
at the sin
yes, the sin
of it all!
My eyes splintered when the question
Do I know you?
swept in like a sinuous hurricane.
I could not hold it back.
I could not banish it like I wanted to.
I could not separate it from the vacant,
keening face of that window.
I could not keep it from wanting to
kidnap me from you.
So I angled,
delivering my body to its voice,
And I caved,
wearing my crown of jagged glass,
And I surrendered,
wordlessly, letting it carry me away.
Like a bent sail rocking in a restless tide.
Like a fragile vessel filled to the brim with
the evidence of your crime.
Like a sunken statue, stone cold,
bristling with submission,
sworn to infernal silence.
