Salt

 

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.