Let me remember only the starry explosion
of our limbed violence. Let me see
the faint reflection on my thighs, through
the windowpane of stockings, the blue-green
bruise of your bite. Let me wear the sweater
you bought to match those marks
day after day until
it falls to ruin. Let me fall
one more time into our night
before I set it away, like a skein of scarlet
silk ribbon, thrown and unfurling
into the battered sky.
Let me call myself, Girl.
Your voice is silence. Your voice
is the color of birds in mean flocks
over the fields: a fast shadow, passing.
Let me catch the ribbons falling from the sky
and bind my wrists and ankles tight. Erase
this freedom: keep me bound in ecstasy. Constrain me in sorrow’s
flaxen destruction. Let me have courage enough
for your absence. Let me adore
everything: every golden corner of your
quiet soul, every splintered moment of your
ravenous soul, let me take the palm prints
from your gut and devour
their slap-shaped wounds like so much
memory candy. Let me give you midnight-colored
velvet pouches filled with searing inverse oil lanterns
to cast darkness on your every regret. Let me
adore you. Every splintered shard
of your furious, exquisite heart. Let me, please,
now.
I’m soon to forget.
Alice Anderson‘s collection “Human Nature” won the Bobst Prize from NYU and the Best First Book Prize from The Great Lakes Colleges Association. Her work is included in “American Poetry: The Next Generation” and “On The Verge: Emerging Poets in America.” After recovering from traumatic brain injury, she has completed two new poetry manuscripts, THE WATERMARK and ELECTRIC PLUM BURLESQUE.