Vertebrae

You are so lovely when breaking.

I see a demon's year of pretending to heal
in the shallow curves of your lips.
Ugly stories you tell so studiously off-hand,
divorced from the vibrations of vocal chords.

Your collarbones twitch out a dance,
moles on your skin forming words.
Patterns shift between each vertebra
parts of your design I must study.

Here is my guilty little daydream:
my touch sliding down your arm,
linking our bony fingers together.
Our hands pressed back to back.

I will apologize for the shocking
temperature of my simple caress.
You may slap me for my carelessness.
But you will use the other palm.

We are a joyously dirty pair.
Who sensed it first? The fates? The muses?
Even with detachment as our motto,
we somehow connect, fit atom into atom.

By 'connect' I mean, not that we two
are complimentary halves of one
gloriously elusive, mythic whole.
Keys to locks and corks to bottles.

We are instead the same half,
If you line us up, hip to defiant hip,
and examine our sullen silhouettes,
you will see our identical jagged cuts.

We can compare whose grooves run deeper,
cut to disguise our fear with bravado.
We face down our demons by fleeing,
playing blindman's bluff on a cliff.

Sweeping our limbs with casual airs,
we reach to burn the sins right off,
remove our cancerous memories by
making love to the greedy sun.

Eyes slitted with pleasure-burn,we
blind-skip over that seductive edge
proving that heavy souls must fall
stripped of all but skeletal hope.

As we lie here, licking our many wounds,
re-feathering wings and sharpening claws,
watching our lover leave us for the sea,
I confess I want you most when breaking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~AEW~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shiver me allegories! <-- More Rhymes