Night walker, lady gypsy, woman of sapphire and rust,
I want you,
Bringer of the moon, hands dappled in silver, stained with the cool
jewel
of beauty,
I covet you.
Whisper-weaver, voice like darkened silk, jasmine and sage, tea
leaves and
rose,
I need you
I have worshipped you
But I will try to forget you.
You have been my trinity,
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva,
You have been the birth of this terrible white-blazed glory of a
night
through the destruction
Of all the dull mornings before you came with star-shot wonder and
the
power to make
All the worlds on my horizon for the taking shrink down to two eyes
And the hands that will never reach out to me,
Maintaining the loneliness,
Loneliness,
Ever the steady loneliness of the days without you or the night held
through you.
Lovely one, dweller of the rainwater and lavender, the heart and the
windswept sea,
I have dreamt of you,
Opal palmed goddess, the private Athena, Aphrodite, and Eris,
I love you,
I have bowed to you,
But I will learn to disremember you
Slowly weaning myself from the milk of Rapture,
The curdled nourishment of praying to a blind idol,
An empty altar,
With knees bruised from too many years spent bent in prayer,
Lips cracked from hoarse chants of desire
I will stand, bones cracking in an outcry of revolt,
Of refusing to leave this routine ritual of self-sacrifice for the
sake of
The sanctuary of your presence
I will slowly unlearn the language of mantra, of holy hymn built for
you
and will instead
Only sing of the human, lesser parts of the divine.
I will not quote the violets, the porcelain, the star-bound body,
The velvet woven in the seams of sleep, of skin, of tongue,
I will not speak to hear the river-stone laughter, look to seek the
splendid beauty
Of the truest person I have ever known, the girl who is exquisite,
yes,
But more importantly, free,
Unnamable.
With the symphony in the turn of a wrist,
The Artic Ocean in her voice,
She, you, have flung my soul out into the wild wonder of the deepest
jungles, all this thriving Earth,
But you, you, you are my nothing,
My unclaimed dearest,
It doesn’t matter that I am willing to give you incense and oil,
orchid and
gold,
Time, all of my life, my dedication and my devotion,
I could just as easily stand here with empty hands and a barren
heart
For you are the wind rippled water,
The purest flow of life coursing between desperate fingers, never
captured,
And never meant to be captured.
It doesn’t matter that I want to walk out onto the streets and for
you,
For you to think the dawn in my steps,
The rising sun in my stride
Just as you are the moon of my heart,
The milk of stars in my mouth,
The eye of my compass, and the center of my happiness for
I have never had the right to be the huntress,
I have never had the right to be the lone carrier of your happiness.
And so
I will never again try to possess the whole of my own possession,
For you deserve me to be empty of your name’s sake,
For me to shake my clothes free of your scent,
You deserve to remain unspoken, to be open and free,
Wild, and ready to find the one who can give you whatever I was
never meant
to offer.
