Allison Grayhurst

Vow

The noise broke

by the garden where I loved you

like I loved the truth,

where my bones drowned in your darkness

and my war was unlocked like the need

for completion that you promised but never

could attain. This wilderness

of power, purposelessness and extremes I laid down inside of

to be beside you and the softness of your mouth

and the elixir of your touch

became mine, grew like a second body

merging with my own like death does

with cold eternity.

 

 Detour

 
Bobbing for apples under a raincloud.

Soon what was planted will flourish

and the empty casket under the bridge

will be a nest to weather out winter’s storms.

I will never know you, not as

a weak-kneed dancer or as a lover,

blurred by idealism. I will be in the dumpyard

with the rest of the dead flowers,

caught off guard by your morning song.

My shadow rises like a weed into a tree,

simple company for empty days. You are skin and fury,

a shore that is quicksand with many mosquitoes lingering

around. I was stuck on your butcher’s block, smelling of

musky ambition. I was predatorial, though myself, never

a match for your strengthening spikes.

Honesty is a Sunday summit, punishing to pursue,

dropping undergarments for a glimpse at purity.

Wings are hallways I have lost track of. Like circus lions

they struggle, beaten, chained, with useless magnificence.

I flattened my folds for you, spread myself as a net

over what was precious and wild

to work for your children, to maintain the belief

that the back-mirror-reflection would come alive.

Half way into eternity, building in me like the scent of salt water.

Another lifetime I may be in motion, with you, joyfully rolling down hills.

Today what is natural is inside the cupboard.

I am learning to accept the mice-chewed boxes,

gradually forgiving the distorted shape of these and even other

make-due flaws.