In your arms I am fragile as two small
wrists, and yet I'm deathless. Even air can't

hold me as you do. Strained of air my curved
body will drop to the ground like a kiss.

It will lie still as an old children's book.
The dogs will step carefully around it.

Some boy will think himself in love with my
indifferent death. Boy! Take my bones as muse!

Yes. See me do that! Death is a page
to turn, gentle or terrible. Always

singing. A birth I can endure. But Life
without your simple fingers in my hair,

my stare cracking on your solid back, as
you cart off your love in cold milk bottles.

Those brutal minutes - flapping by like sharp
drunk swans... Now daybreak sneers through its sour breath.

The world lops off its furious sweet cloak.
Mean shop windows wheel out my misery.

I become a limp cartoon... grotesque and
dangling... no longer stretching out my arms.

How foolish-the Air thinks itself in charge!
Pull your slender bones from my body, Air.

Stuff me in that brown and earthy pocket.
Clutch at me. My heart will break your fingers.

That boy who I muse will shout out a love
he does not understand! Those dogs will come

home glittering! Even what's left of me
will push through the earth, an outrageous tree!

But take away his breath from me and it
will be as if I never lived at all.

copyright © 2001, Lucy Anderton & the e-poets network
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