Your Shoulder

How distant then was the warm scent of your collar, your dark blue sweater 

from the hem of the lace dress

that swept around my ankles as I fled, 

a theatre burning in my heart. 

You would have loved it there. 

Delicate installations gracing the little labyrinth 

colossal frames of seduction mounted on wrought walls—

my vain, alluring Gethsemane.  

It felt gorgeous. The din isolated me, but I didn’t mind. 

True to you in nerve and leg and corner of eye

I wove your portrait onto the landscape 

marking every spectacle before which I stood

with a prayer for you. The blissful thread of my musings

veining from room to room, vista to vista,

from the private point of view to the dance.

I sewed café to cliff,

rabbit hole to basilica,

vapour to stone. 

How distant then was the emotive bend of your mouth 

from the incision I laboured to mend. 

As I fumbled to plaster with pigments the surfaces

shattered by my aching,

I wondered if you had already enjoyed an afternoon coffee. 

I did not think that the tableau included me. 

The modern sensual was eclipsed by the hushed flagellant;

at once I discarded the culture of celebrating wounds

just because they never heal. In that medley of an arena

where dissonance defines gold

I lamented the distance.