with a line from Rimbaud
To be next to you again,
to feel the knob of your pelvic bone,
the door of your hip opening
to a room of light
where a fuchsia blouse hangs
in the closet of a conch shell,
the silhouette of a single red-mouthed bell;
to shut my eyes one more night
on the delta of shadows
between your shoulder blades—
mysterious wings tethered inside
the pale cage of your body—run through
by Lorca’s horn of moonlight,
strange unicorn loose along the dim streets
separating our skins;
to be still again knowing
the bow of your spine, the arc of your torso—
a widening road to an alabaster mountain,
a secret path to a cliff overlooking a sea
salt-heavy and laced in foam, a caravel
crushing the swells, parting each
like blue-skirted thighs—lay before me,
another New World shore the gods
have chained me to;
to have you a last time, at last, a touch away,
but then, to not reach out
because my hands are dressed in scarves of smoke;
to lie silent at your side,
an ember more brilliant with each yellow breath,
glowing and dying and dying again,
dreaming a mesquite forest I once stripped to fire
before the sky went ash, undid its dark ribbons,
and bent to the ground, grief-ruined,
as I watch you from the window—
in this city, the city of you, where I am a beggar—
the Dawns are heartbreaking.
from When My Brother Was an AztecFind it in the library
Copyright © 2012 Natalie Diaz
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.