Female: nude,
copper on white.
The sun rarely sets in June
so I bathe naked
in cold lonely ponds.
I remember her
swimming
naked too.
We slept in a drawer,
snug beneath our ghosts,
undisturbed by details.
We felt there, then,
outside ourselves -
anchored by balloons,
and me, the jetpack to her spoon.
We never said
I love you
so we wouldn’t have to run away.
But I’ll never forget
that I did.
Golden hour rarely sets in July,
so we continued to hide from the moon.
She dove in shallow waters,
and came up red.
That sounds dramatic,
so it was.
Munch painted us in a different dimension.
As if the Frieze of Life was blissful,
and he never had to paint
Scream, or,
The Sick Child.
I don’t really know why I felt the gravity of a Munch painting.
I liked the colors I guess.
I told myself I pictured what our children would look like:
little shadows running through our garden,
an exposure fading beneath summer’s sun.
But
really all I saw were the modernist foundations of our home:
Window frames so large they had no sills for cats to sit on.
Norwegian wood, stained with the primer of our ghosts unborn.
Empty rooms, dressed and stretched by the timelapse of daylight
hovering across our untouched floors.
Sunsets come sooner in August,
and we watched our words float
out of our mouths
and drew sweet nothings
in the nooks of our souls.
The moon began to trespass
into the edges of our dream,
reminding us of great books we closed early because we couldn’t bear the end.
Not because we’re scared of commitment
but so we don’t have the reality of goodbye,
farewell - I’ll miss you,
I love you
but we can’t?