Member Poem

            For Sonya
 
Your painful metamorphosis
will see no end;
will produce not product
on the vine;
not like briar roses –
imperfect, rough, and small.
Not like red camellias that fall
like heads rolled from a guillotine.
Your heart won’t cease
but will beat upon your breast
like a funeral drum
moving down the street.
Like a nest within a dead bird’s chest
you will live among what’s left.
Twisting fallen hairs
around your finger,
sitting on the bed,
quantifying silence
in your dimly lit apartment.
You’ll drink the tea and count
each dust mote that hangs
around your head;
massage your arms and neck,
fortifying missing sleep.
 
I will pluck each thorn
from the briar rose’s branch
and keep them in my sleeve.
I’ll set them on my writing desk
and measure each one’s poison
with a pricking of my palm.
I’ll observe your
painful metamorphosis
coming up the stairs like age,
beating on each step
like a funeral drum.
I will sit upon the balcony
and wait for you to come.
I’ll host your metamorphosis
as best as tea and sympathy can heal.
 
We’ll lay awake and recount
our visions of a made-up past.
I’ll finger at the torn upholstery
and spilled stuffing like an open wound.
We’ll pass the metamorphosis around,
we’ll share the blessings and the curse.
We’ll dim this light,
switch on the one across the room,
smile at obscenities as morphine.
We’ll cut the cake,
observing crumbs dropping
from each incision
(a smaller slice for each of us).
Will we pick dry crumbs
sticking to the plate?
We’ll wish to stroll beneath
the streetlamp; climb the hills.
But your painful metamorphosis
binds you to the bed.
 
One year, ten years, a lifetime?
How long will your mind
bang against your skull
like a funeral drum
drowning out your memory?