© Sauce*Box, Summer 1996.
All rights revert to author.
Behind My Door
by Allison
Eir Jenks
I know it's you
Behind my door
Standing like Cairo
with a lean black panther
shadow.
You got in your car
coming for me no matter how
far you had to go.
Copper rain swallowing your
brain cells like it did when
I first kissed you in a new place
I can't remember
and I've never gone back.
Your starving white mask is
waiting for the lining of my face
to enhance the dullness of your earth
Don't you feel ridiculous for being here?
Don't you know that the
Colors are under the lining now?
I know if I let him in
I'll be able to deduct passion again.
My skeletal tact has obliterated me.
I know he can touch me like he's
slept next to me for fifty years.
I can pretend I'm not home.
The stakes follow me,
laughing vigorously.
I open the door and look
but I don't let him in.
The horrible feeling is back.
I'm ejected from my own endurance.
Tempted and assaulted by
the absence of worry in his face.
He smiles at me like
He was on the plane
When I flew to other countries
for the opening nights of operas
Sitting inside me
and underneath my companions hand
as he held it
Forbidding the tightness of certainty.
As I sat cross-legged in front of
royal pianos in candle-lit rooms
He was the flightiness of the melody,
A rowdy young boy who knew
he had something so feverish and
good that he'd never tell
anyone too much about it.
Men have come to me
with their circuses of wealth
and dressed up words.
I've slept on coastal beaches,
Waking to fruit and wine
as you were in Australia and China
kissing pretty girls with a force
way less than the one
that you kiss me with, right?
Was I really the purest branch
of emotion in you?
You were gone this whole time-
Mutilating me with the anchor
of your absense.
Why are you sure that it was the thread of
One kiss you sewed up in me
that kept you with me all this time-
Invigorating the corners of my Xanadu smile
I let you in,
Craving to mimic the sly frown
used on me by an old Adversary.
So I can seem unwilling.
I'm shamefully chilled just by your luxury-
The taste of French wine and
cigarettes on your tongue
Your ivory colored shirt
showing part of your scented chest.
I'm exposed. That makes me erratic.
You ship dazzling dancers into my soul
crowding me with all the times
I let you interfere.
I've worn this subdued look once
on tarnished streets.
I know I'm gonna let you do it again.
Burnish my life with that tough harmony
That no one else could ever match.
Then you'll get back in your junky car
and take the hazy brick streets back
to your world of inaccurate senses
and sleepy television afternoons.
You know you've settled. You idiot
How could you be okay with that?
Go right ahead and leave me stuck
in the shapelessly
long way that I love you.
And finish suffocating for it
until you're dead.
* * * * *
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