So at dusk on Boston’s North End
rich with delicate plums hanging heavy and purple
their skins taut and glistening like jewels in the fading light
I gazed dumbly into her eyes as if I were a sheep and she the second coming
her eyes like the Sea of Galilee
shimmering with shards of unfair deaths glinting like jagged glass
haunted by a meadow of gallows
swaying like grim wildflowers in her past
whispering echoes of blood children-lives lost
perhaps her own
carried forward by an emancipator’s quiet resolve
Her smile
teasing
hissed
Do you want a hug?-her voice light
lips shoving side to side like a shuttle on a loom
weaving a figure-eight pattern
their celadon green shimmer swaying among dogwood blossoms
their petals catching light in the musky dog-scented mist
I played horns like horns of failure
yet now she laughs on any
every cross
her voice a low
haunting echo
blending with the soft hum of crickets and the buzz of her dragonfly-wing lips in the hazy evening light
Not until later did she ask
Shall we hide or shall we hunt?-her words a stark challenge slicing the air
echoing the solemn whisper
Persecute the sinners in solemnity
as if decreeing judgment over her haunted past
Like any tin man
like any scarecrow
her heart a bird’s nest of thistle and gorse
prickly and tangled
its golden gorse blooms flaring like tiny suns
stubborn sparks of life woven with brittle twigs and sharp thorns
cradling eggs of hope cracked by time
a haven for fleeting dreams pecked apart by loss
In bed
her scent was the cinders of Salome
the charred remnants of passion and sacrifice clinging to her skin tanned leather for the lampshade
glowing translucent
Hers her kingdom for a horse
a desperate plea for escape
for want of a nail we puny and frail
undone by the smallest lack
Her eyes reject reverence for those unfair deaths
her shoulders lift in a shrug
and her coral reef hair flows in the breeze
