You are a city I cannot breach

You are a city built of shadowed corners
and mysterious alleys
I long to explore them with my fingers and my tongue
Trace the fine veins in your marble walls and wrap myself in your tapestries
I look at you and I see a dark and sweltering night
pregnant with heat and a full moon
and all the little things I want to reveal
in hushed whispers and languid caresses
But you keep your secrets close
and your walls maintained
with the sharp arrows of your archers
that are careless sometimes
with where they choose their target
And I wonder
if you are even aware

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Uncertain

Is there anything

that is inherently

beautiful

all by itself?

Or do all the

beautiful

things

wrap themselves

in

thorns

to guard

from being crushed

by overzealous ardor?

Photo by *andokadesbois on We Heart It

Fiddling While Rome Burns

Scattered bites of joy in the face of abject suffering

Prying kindness off forked tongues

(Must I wrest my happy from the jaws of monsters?)

Satiating bloodlust of the drunken masses

(If I relish this small joy I found, will it land like salt on your unhealed wounds?)

Don’t look to me to ease your sorrow

If I cannot save the burning city, then I shall glory, unapologetically, in its dazzling demise

Yearning for Spring and Other Things

I watch you from afar,
drowning my desire
in the secret places
of my garden.
If I could choose to be a single
bloom in yours,
I’d choose not the heady
rose,
nor the proud, resplendent
lily. No,
I would choose to
be the shyly budding
tulip,
for she does not compete
with any other
for the full weight
of the sun’s hopeless infatuation
with her.

Morning Dove

Aleigha Kely

If, when counting colossal breaths,
the symmetry proves
too much, call down to me the
ways you’d like to further vanish.
Take me as a place you’d
travel to, when the swallows

go. All I can know about
you surfaces briefly, as if caught
in some oblivion. Some mornings,
I wake to gentle breath, and think in
soft touches, wonder where your
mind goes each night.

I could keep reaching for certainty
in response to this
grow-old-with-me,
but why land there? Let’s
step out somewhere more
blue-evoking, or bend the

river north. It isn’t
too important to decide
where to build the farm,
or the house with exposed wood;

the ceiling fan turns slowly above me.
I picture linens rippling in gentle
heat. Somewhere far away, a morning
dove perched on the moss fence
sings his holy tune.

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Love Me in a Different Language

If you’ve forgotten how to love me, mi amor, then please recall the words that once upon a time were softly sung to you,

that were crooned so sweetly at your mothers breast in the land that bore your father and his father before him.

Draw near to me, amor, and we’ll map our bodies with the sounds of passion,

where we’ll learn to love anew in your mother’s tongue, passed down from generation to generation.

Let us ink our hearts in nuances of sun-baked streets and moonlit trysts
in dialects that knew of love and loss long before our stars were lit,

that echo still of golden skin, and raven hair, and lips that taste of briny seas.

If you’ve forgotten how to love me, mi amor, let us learn to love again in languages unspeakable.

It is said that one changes personalities to subconsciously reflect the language that is being spoken.

Once Upon a Silver Tongue

I sharpen my teeth on all the words I keep from you,
rolling them to and fro in my mouth,
tasting every nuance,
every cadence,
so that even if they do escape
they are smooth as glossy pearls.
I cut my tongue when they gallop up my throat
demanding to be released
and I’ve no choice but to choke them back,
slicing my throat to ribbons on their descent, on every jagged crest and
uneven curve.
But even in their wake,
for you
I still bleed silver.

 

Addictive Poison

You weave around me with the grace of a swordsman,
only your weapon of choice is your words.
What a lethal dance we engage in,
parrying,
striking with focused precision,
sliding that unbearable hurt between my ribs with a lovers skill.
How beautifully I fall apart before you,
as you watch in silence with glittering,
hungry eyes.

Unmapped

Like a melody that I once knew,
you sink into the buried spaces of
my mind and stain all the dull grays
a vibrant carmine.
Echoes of conversations long since past drift on a million horizons,
illusions of a mirage,
tattooing my retinas with a constellation of loss.
I weave your words from threads of
forgotten memories
and run them across my body.
But they lose their way in the
unmapped galaxies
you refused to venture near,
competing only
with the same spectacular way
I used to lose myself
at the mere thought of you.

 

Imago Dei

In the caverns of my mind

I walk

amongst ruins of scattered opulence.

How brilliantly they shined

once,

how final their destruction is.

If You are to live in here

with me,

then please restore my soul.

Set me as a seal upon Your arm,

a royal diadem in Your right hand.

A second pair of footsteps echoes in the dark,

or maybe

I imagine them.