My eyes unpeel in the oily-black air,
dying snores ping off the bedroom mirror,
and the sucking return vent, ominous as a chest wound,
reminds me I'm alone.
I don't know where I am,
until I bump a lump of hair that snorts
like a lightly goosed pig, and I remember Gizmo,
my devoted-to-a-fault Yorkie,
still loves me after everyone else has left.
A sweep of my surroundings,
a flip through my mental Rolodex,
and the ice of sleep begins melting,
dripping memories into my thirsty mind.
In thick silence I sigh, and hear her throaty,
sax-sweet voice, with adoration unspoken, 
lips unbattered by winds of propriety,
but bursting with the delight of life.
She was like the overzealous gymnast
who threw her arms so wide that her leotard tore.
Her imperfections made me love her,
because through her cracks, her light shined.
 
     February 27, 2005, 11am, 
the Westwood General Baptist Church foyer,
the first time I touched her.
I tugged her forearm,
that was covered in a fuzzy black sleeve of static cling.
She turned to me with confusion in those dark eyes,
that looked like two eclipses.
I know that word is usually not plural,
but it was with Amy.
Amy wasn't perfect.
From the tiny cyst over her left eye, 
bony fingers and toes,
freckles and warts where she didn't want them,
shoulders leading her crooked nose,
eyebrows like two caterpillars
giving each other the cold shoulder,
so overly ambitious, 
they needed to be humbled with tweezers,
from her stringy opaque hair
to that overbite holding a gummy smile,
she had flaws, but she made everything else seem perfect.
Her smile was such,
that when she stretched it across her cheeks,
everything in the world smiled.

     She was hot mint coffee poured into an hourglass,
and if clapping is slapping the crap out of yourself
to show approval then I was slapped,
and slapped hard across the face.
Her aroma opened me up like compressed menthol,
and for the first time in my life I envied  dust.
I envied dust that was pulled to her itchy dress, 
that clung to her moles, her freckles,
felt her chest rise and fall in a tsunami of life,
followed her home, hung in her closet, 
and waited for her to return and fill it again.
With a squeeze I whispered,”You're slipping”,
as she spent so much time greeting each of the faithful, 
she missed a few, and wasn't looking at me, 
her new faithful admirer.
I didn't tell her that.
I was just speechless over how much prettier the sun was
when she was standing in front of it.

     Memories of her are still hard, and still beautiful,
like a cut diamond passing through my lower intestine,
not a sliver, but a Queen Elizabeth diamond, 
one you could golf with.
In a crap life, there was once something sparkling, 
precious, and indestructible,
that was in me, that I helped shape, 
but was so perfectly formed anyway,
only I could tell the difference.
March 15, 2011 3:01 pm

Copyright ©2011 Michael Paul