Salt on the cold air, black feathers and a dark bed. Cosmo is dreaming of his second wife, he is drawing on her flank with his knife. Islands well up behind him: Britain, Madagascar, Santorini and Nightingale. Now you are my whole world, he dream-whispers, one of these days I shall love you to the moon and back.
Night wraps its heavy silk about them. Tonight there is no moon. His dreams come to him as wifely-interrogators, bleeding and pleading:
Where are my roses? yellow for unrequited love, orange for passion?
They are behind the door he answers
What colour's the door?
It's the colour of rotting pears
Who lives there?
We live there: An old married man and his loves
What colour's the door?
It's the colour of pale toad
How will I know it?
It's in two halves
Where are my roses?
They're here, of course they're here. There is no door.
And he flourishes for her a bouquet of stems, astonishingly green, their leaves and thorns reaching for their lost heads, because he loves her. He tells her. Yes, he does.
The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele
2 comments:
A beautiful prose poem - was I meant to be disturbed? Or is that just me!
Thanks Phil,
it's a guilty pleasure, meeting a reader at the moment of flinch
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