Pearls
I like to think that you planned that evening in perfect
precision, like the wide stretch of pink over
teeth, pearls rounded to sweetness
by the caustic tightness of salt.
How the placement of your smile
rising and falling in my chest like ocean
waves, not dying, but – I think, rising,
makes a sudden click, as that of a door shutting.
maybe forever,
on the faint dusty stillness of that room,
where you took my hand and led
me to a world of feathers and leftover
sleep, squeezing its way into the crinkled
corners of my eyes, remnants akin
to the evidence of love on the inside
of your thigh. I like how we composed,
pressing and directing and cresting,
one night into an ageless sphere, so
precious it would last eternity
and one day
just to prove we created something wonderful.
I like to think you were humble,
and that’s what carried you away from my salty tides
rising like heavy breaths of new life,
and smashing to the fragments of glass like
a pearl falling from perfect precision and endless collision
to the shores of this crushing reality. Don’t
look, don’t fall
over that threshold never and always closing,
perfection in the making, as beneath
our sighs lies the quiet insistence of the ocean -
it will never last.
).
