She would sit at the table her brow furrowed three fingers
Sliding back and forth the metronomic caress of intellect
In the silence of the late evening I could hear the rasp of her
Fingerprints on her forehead a soft wisp-wisp-wisp
I imagined she was massaging law school into her skin
I would make myself as small as I could drawing
On a piece of white paper with a blue graphite pencil
The skritch-skritch-skritch of the pencil counter-tempo with
That soft wisp-wisp-wisp of her fingerprints slowly wearing off
Some nights to amuse myself I would riff off her intellectual absorption
Filling the silence with wisp-skritch-skritch-wisp-skritch-wisp-skritch-skritch
I was never able to successfully reconcile the wisp and the skritch as
Law school split her in half one half the fierce intellect the other
Half that willowy brown-skinned woman who slept naked on her
Waterbed with the heat turned to a low boil even in August so that
Her skin burned when I touched it and so her fingerprints melted off
And she became someone I loved but simply did not know
In sweet irony I sometimes catch myself softly rubbing
Counter-tempo on the midnight metronome wisp-wisp-wisp
No comments:
Post a Comment