At the Corner of Richland, Just Below the Tree

I lay—gaping—as the May sun thrashes my skin beneath the desolation of a clear sky. And there is melancholy in the day-waste: the endless neck-aching hours that I have spent with my back erect, mind braced, chest posed—trying to appear as though I am preoccupied in something else—that I am captivated by my book at hand, or that I’m engulfed in, and enamored by some piece of outstanding poetry.

  I check my watch. 4:25.

 My senses become highly inclined. I hear the dislodging of pebbles fly up from the crystal pavement as the rubber soles of your cockroach shoes tear away at the concrete beneath you.

   Your back is tense.

   I remember a time when you used to walk into a room, and all of your aching, burdened muscles would relax at the touch of my palm. And I would let you unravel me like a spool of thread, and you would sink into my soft spaces, ravish my flesh, and your breath would lay like satin over the surface of my rouge cheeks. Back when I was pomegranate and you were cerulean. Back before I was “awkward.”

   Awkward. That is what you said. Like I was some misplaced stranger causing fray in your linear life. Like my body was some left over piece of ravaged trash that  you’d grown tired of eating out of. Like the coated lining of your soft wet throat was now repulsed the humanity of me.

  And I-the cistern from which you used to drink,

  I-

  The nectar that your body worshipped,

  Am now the

  Barren

  Solitary

  That aches to

  Feel your feet.