about a girl.
we know that there was love
before there was paper to slander it on
or even mouths to waste it upon
but in some cases-
there were frames before photographs
and they were in love
as deep as the distance between
the east to the west
love before o�s or e�s
there was something to this-
definitely a glossy something
that fit between their hands in the dark
to feel cold and slick
in the hand that she rescued from his grasp in sleep
and fondled till morning
saw it on his chest
as her tongue left polished trails lit up
by the nightlight
washed away by morning
and like a climax forfeited
a hill collapsing before the zenith-
she said,
�Go away.
There is something I must feel
without you.
I don�t want you to be here
every time I need you.
I want to feel..�
she filled the spaces between
a frame�s four sides
with thoughts and finger taps
and the vaguest recollection
of a man lying on his side on a brick pathway,
looking at her on the verge of a smile-
She woke hungry from a dream
where she had bought what she was looking for.
but, fickle dreams won�t remind you-
even if you cry
and I think, it was then she died.
and that was the end
of finger taps and loneliness,
enough of empty picture frames
and her pursuit of filling them.
Her lover (he was) was drawing pictures
of bricked pathways
and trying to name the sounds
of impatient hands on wooden tables.
Steadfast in his brain was she,
clear against the bricks facing him,
on her side, on the brink of laughter.
Staring at his picture frame,
wood the color of soft pale girl,
he wished she found what she needed.
What she�d been searching for-
The paper was manna and the pen was milk.
He wrote that he loved her,
and needed her, and wanted her there
every time she needed him.
Not just to hold his hand
when the slippery grip of loneliness came at 3 am
or to pacify him
against the urge to write poetry
and take pictures of love so deep
it could be stretched from a sunset
to a rise.
But it was too late
and words meant too many things,
crushing his body against the brick path
like crumpled sketches of her long-dead face.
If every possible sound that rhymed with fickle
hit him like a bullet,
he was dead,
with her.
and he would always be there
when she needed him.