YOUR NAME IS INDELIBLE

by Lindsay Preston

I've been trying to send you to an island inside my brain,

that burial place for the faces of former lovers,

still the way they looked when they were my lovers;

now and then their withering versions

appear outside my head,

smiling, reminiscing;

but me, I just nod at their mistaken memories;

hope they don't catch me digging deep in dunes for

their long-buried names.

Your name is indelible.

Its first letter creases my palms,

its three syllables on the tip of my tongue.

This morning when I turned inside to the

shape of your head on the pillow, I

smelled skin musk.

And

that new guy

whose name I didn't hear when

with that one-up-for-me smirk you

introduced him yesterday,

that new guy

whose offered hand I failed to shake, being so

wrapped up in the movement of your lips as you told me of

that new guy

you said was from Germany, or Albany, or Turkey -

well ...

twice last night I woke with a start

sweating the moments he's in you.

I have raked and shovelled, discarded and kept,

pulled from the rubble these new commitments:

I shall not strangle you.

I shall store from sight the killing cord,

the Valentine's tie you gave -

which next year I might wear.

I shall flush pills gathered from double doctoring, and

take a leave of absence to that island.

Not the one with former lovers' faces,

the one south of here;

tropical drinks, bongo drums, belly dancers, and

sand more than six feet deep.