A swaying blade ponders and rears
(reflecting a divine heart-shaped face
a widow’s peak slicing down forehead and
looming over shells of white and blue)
to crudely divide a sliver of rope,
in which splinters of thread
spark out like fireworks
of subtle untangling.
Each rope lies side by side by side,
entrenched in sullen waters and
clay pixie droppings. They measure
the distance between us.
It seems forever glitters with length.
I lay naked upon these ropes
that stitch themselves around
the serene figures of
brick tiles that are now unlatching
from innocence’s grasp.
A net of virginity losing
slab and tether of abstinence
to the salivating lips of temptation.
My fingers quiver and ache to redeem
and grasp the snagged slithers
(that not only measure our distance, but hold my very embodiment),
to prevent them from shimming apart
and wilting upon
calling earth, but I cannot, I am listless and
birthing only sweat that flutters into
hell’s walls in microscopic
parachutes of impurity.
Upon these walls are tears in reality,
the essence-of-color’s shadow children
dance their own ballet, intermingling with
my sin and parading with stealthy
spins and arches and dance numbers,
swinging forth my sweat like
liquidated, salty partners.
If a moment were to burrow beneath my
pores and surge through my body
perhaps I’d stop my pupils from locking
with hers,
because damnation is what swims and bellows
underneath those soaking, porcelain-doll eyes.
I cannot look away, I cannot intertwine my
digits with the fraying martyrs of innocence,
for I am warping within her putrid gaze.
And now the stretched ropes are gone, I dropped into
a tassel of limp strands long ago.
My body is all that remains, a wet flower crowning the nether
depths like a defiled broach,
suspended by lethargy and never to fall.
The wet flower has long decapitated its own roots,
shriveled and worthless,
for innocence was its only waters.
