A poignant poem by Reena. It’s intense and sensuous.
If I stoop
it is to drink deep of you
my doppelgänger, black and grey
I wear your shades better than any other
wanting none on the bench beside us
You moved in with me
not content with one night stands
Watching you tackle my empty bottles, rusty knives
and dripping sheets, I knew I was home
I kiss you in my smiles in old photographs
in poems hidden because I can’t bear sunlight touching your skin
in the sound of the ocean that surges on the window sill
in the sleeping faces of my children who left before childhood
in the creaks of rickety knees trying to catch cheap buses
and in the mossy cracks of an old house on the verge of doom
sometimes getting up in the dark like Psyche
to gaze at your familiar face
and marvel at the span of your wings folded over me
grazing myself with your arrow
Even if they part us some day
you will live on as sepia patches in my heart
and as wrinkles upon my face
Till then, let our shafts hold fast and slowly whirl
your seasons cyclic, my blood in swirls
a muted echopraxia
of a world
afflicted with vertigo
Image designed by Anumita Roy and Different Truths
Reena Prasad is a poet/writer from India, currently living in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). Her poems have been published in several anthologies and journals e.g. The Copperfield Review, First Literary Review-East, Angle Journal, Poetry Quarterly etc. She is also the Destiny Poets UK’s, Poet of the year for 2014 and one of the editors of The Significant Anthology released in 2015. She can be read at ‘Butterflies Of Time’.
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Love this piece and find it to be one of the best I’ve read. I have posted it on Let’s Talk About Poetry at Facebook making certain to cite your page and credit its author.