on the electrodynamics of moving bodiesA Poem by Kylan
the sheets fold you up carefully, cleanly, and you rattle and shiver inside them, like a packet of dry garden seeds. in the scrubbing light, the tulips on the bedside table turn toward you, their lips smeared sloppily and red, like children experimenting with their mothers' make-up. i sit beside you in silence and i remember. i sit in the cool, late winter silence – the stamens of light through the windows pure and untouched and at peace, and the nurses quiet and attending, their hands smoothing, their heels clicking.
snatch and slink of the trumpets, the hot august dancefloor breathing in and out under our feet and you, you, smelling like lilacs and sweat, and your smile peeled and undiminished. outside, the moon tilts its head and smiles thinly, like those old portraits of weak-chinned, urn-bodied women with high, unwrinkled foreheads and breakable hands. the people around us swell, spit valves open, and that crazy, skinny upright bass player with his cool blue skin grows his notes in the gloom – moist and gagging as greenhouse flowers.
we tremble, shake – so many moving parts. the bed swallows you up, your breath tiny and instant, like snow melting on skin. your hair is white and ghostly, hands knobbed and bent, curling and spotted like gourds. they seem to have taken everything from you but your smell – the smell of the late afternoon just before it rains and of rising dough. an invasive vineyard of tubes run up and down your body, through your nostrils, and your eyes trace lazily beneath lashless eyelids.
moonlight is caught in between the sheets, like pressed flowers in between the pages of old books and i watch the sloped hypotenuse of your shoulders rise and fall. your dreams populate the night – sticky wallflowers – and the brainwashed idiot moon looks in on us. i love how your lips part in the night, in sleep, and the measured kites of your breath. we sweat in the night, humid shadows clinging to us like bats and i touch you very softly.
you do not wake up, but I could sit beside you until I dissolve away, like some stranded jellyfish. it is night-time and the fog cuddles in like a child climbing into bed with its parents during a thunderstorm and the streetlights yellow and gulp and lean in toward each other for warmth. frost withers the windowpanes. you breathe – the doctor comes in and looks at us and then goes away and he leaves the room emptier than before.
you are wearing one of my sweaters on the beach – the seagulls flocking in their nunneries and the sting of the cold salt spray. we sit crosslegged in a tepee of femured driftwood built before us by teenagers and littered with cigarette butts and we whisper to each other.
the tulips watch you like landlocked sailors watching the horizon.
we see each other from across the street.
your fingers tighten around mine.
© 2009 Kylan |
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Added on December 12, 2009AuthorKylanMedford, ORAboutI'm a senior in high school and I came out of the womb with a pen in one hand and a notebook in the other. I have a complex relationship with poetry and fiction -- fiction being my native format, but .. more..Writing
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