LeeAnneKortus

They die too loudly here - a barking, trumpeting sound that keeps everyone else awake. Some say it is the salt in the water tickling through the IV or the televisions or microwaves talking in each room. I can hear the hum of metal each time the nurse shifts her skirt or leans over to tie her shoes. They come too close to us, afraid of camoflauge of the smell of orange and then pretend they did not mean it. Lunch is biscuits and rice pudding or green jello in a styrofoam cup and a straw puncturing a carton of milk. At night we play cards - spades or hearts or dominoes with tiles someone's uncle left behind or forgot to put away. And we will

My tongue swells like a gallows and sticks to the roof of my mouth each time I say deliverance. The doctor says it is only temporary and that I will get over it in time. Some mornings I wake up as a poet - a random man of bones and meat, clattering down the sidewalks, hardly breathing and afraid to move too quickly. Once I fried an egg on the battery of my car because I wanted to see the summer heat rise up like angels and tangle in the power lines, knowing I am God's annointed. The nurse says it's ridiculous, that I should know better that morphine will not kill me and I can still step on cracks without the world slippin

Let the stars make their protest; let them trip us roughshod and unkempt - Orion is at our side tonight, and the dust from long ago settles on this side of heaven. The air is spangled here - it rests upon us in a silver tallith unravelling across the vaulted sky and lingers where our fingers clasp. We have lost the moon, that wanton keeper of lies and wishes only virgins make in summer; and night,   that naked warrior, blushes in this unkempt heat and holds our senses hostage.

I find you unfolding where the sky meets noon and all the flowers bloom - vivid and indiscreet like ladies who drink too much wine at lunch and blush when waiters curl their names perfect and lonely like birds on the wire...

Simple starry gift wrapping paper guard my thoughts engraved in pencil into these tear-stained pages.

This lovely suicide - the hiss of smoke dangling between your fingers and the loss of breath that claimed your sleep. Your limbs - somnolent, wrapped against the autumn chill fingers draped with paper angels as someone you never knew tucked a lily behind your dreams. I could almost hear your skin speaking eloquent and parched as summer, wondering if you had landed somewhere holy or if god had kept you waiting.

Midnight's tawdry pulse is feeble under my fingertips, and her long black dress feels like August slipping through my fingers. I like how her bones complain that I misuse them, tender to my touch, and how her jaw arches back and the moon arcs like a razor across the room. We flaunt the stars, the stones under our skin stretching the bed frame till we crack. And I fill you up, your arms a battle raging in the waning lies of morning.

I remember the colors you made that night on the porch when the fireflies claimed the air around us - the bright blue blazing between your fingers as you said breathing was a trick of the night. I raised your hand to touch my face, feeling the pink trail of the morning yet to come humming on your palm and the deep pulse of orchid staining my mouth in soft surrender.

The morning is a tapestry... tripping over last night's grace, I watch you weave your skin and shake out your hair - soft teal and jonquil shadowing your cheek as the curtains part between your hands. Threads tangle as you turn, telling me dawn is a gentle lover, and the tumble of birds plaiting their soft notes lingers on the pillows where your smile is my undoing.

The streets are cool this time of year, thick with rain and dahlias and the scent of missing summer. Leaves bloom on the cusp of gold, meandering as they scatter and let the wind find them new homes. The skies turn honey, redolent of smoke and shadows - the soft burr of crimson muddled in the autumn sky.