From a body of flowers strewn
Across the silence of a stream,
A prayer offers itself naked,
Unadorned to the fingers of sunlight
Caressing the swollen tip of shapeless clouds.
Someone chants the Credo & my knees
Topple like pinball, bowling pins,
To the concrete where one ant, two ants
Die, their scream subsonic enough
To escape a god's notice.
The wreaths bedecking gravestones
Smell of incense & lilacs - my son
Must be playing with his mother's things again.
The prayers fall back on us as rain,
The stream wakes and regurgitated the dream,
The flowers wilt into knots of pebbles
Polished in the star's wink.
The moon tries on her smile & likes it.
I have to feed the guests, listen for his tears,
Carry the trash to the back & bury my tears
Among the sameness of the dark space.
Silence, no laughter, no song,
No flutter of dress on skin, just
The tired snore of a little boy
& the long sigh of exhaustion.
I change the flowers in the stream,
Gather footprints, crumbs & dust from the floor,
A glass of wine exhausts its embrace in the air,
The moon expands her forced smile,
I hear a sniffle & here, here,
It is fine, it is going to be fine
But I don't believe it.
Sleep steals him off, away from me
So I sit there, holding his head,
Staring grief in the eye,
Stretching passed him to her,
To capture a smile, a wink,
The scent of her morning skin,
The taste of her morning breath,
Anything, everything, something.
The long sigh escapes me & we sit there,
My unplotted grief and I, as dawn
Seduces the night into wakefulness.
Hi dearie, trying my hands at the community feature. This should be fun eh?
©Osahon Oka, 2020.
