[no title – first line]

 

You fair liar

of a better time.

when parents

not dead yet

your eyes still collecting

rather than barring

my legs to open.

I let you faster than you can go.

My instinct:

to let you.

Hold me open.

Fit me to love something,

country music,

something simple.

 

Did you realize your eyes had changed?

A snap-shot tells me

your hands full with mother and father

your iris wide and golden

no heavy sleep over face and neck.

 

Now eyebrows

quiet remnants

keep your face.

They echo a childhood.

Always raised,

as if you could gather the courtyard,

all the women, brightly dressed

intricately designed,

and carry them in rib.

In thin hip and thigh

that are like a harlequin’s.

 

But eyes tell you how you lost

to the mission

a plane, a native people

trying for Christ

like a fox to reason

with the hound.

Family abandoned

land sprawling jungle and machete.

 

Two brothers left;

one to cling to teachers calf

the other to throw stones.

 

Parents gone

and Guatemala

still in unrest to meet them.

 

With sweet restraint

your hands

will paint my mouth

before pushing into it,

this body is kind,

nourished by your trembling

gathered to lift some calm

preserved in you.

 

I do love your sleepy lids

and the golden that returns

as I open.

But then, like birth of you,

this body gives you way to go.

and I return to small

envelope myself

back to empty.

 

Gold in eye

pours like sap

to fill cavern walls,

 

give you way

sad eyed boy

who at my hand

becomes a deers flank

quivering to trust

the hunters daughter

Honeysuckle wet in palm.

 

##

by Shannon Nissa Bailey Powers