The sunlight whispers through the cracks of my shutters, sprinkling my face with shards of glittering shadow. The petals of my eyes flutter, shaking from my lashes, a hundred years of future sneezes. The breeze curls around the bedsheets and before I am awake, my body checks itself for vacancy. Before I move, I have already smelled the dust that covers my skin. Making white smootheness skuffed to grayness by blind pedestrians. I am wrapped in clothes of cobwebs and my body is a locust shell, cracked and clinging to the bark of willows. My skin aches, encrusted with barnacles made of tears and excess dreams. The breath through my sheets smells like you and the violets around my face are flused away by the blushing heat of memory. Dust is gathering in the places where you have been, coating my breasts and neck with gray chalk and the wetness of my fuchia skin is caked with weeks of being lost. Missing you shifts from side to side- desert sand sifting at the twisting of blankets.
At the end of the day I climb inside those sheets- soft as the mornings waking with you- mocking the touch of your skin. I sleep the night inside you. And the dust fills my ears with the self-whispering of your words. It covers my freckles.
Maybe tonight it will rain, washing the dust from my lips, and the sun will wake us, and you can brush the damp hair from my sleeping cheeks and kiss the lonliness away.

10/11/2004

Posted on 10/13/2004
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