Blister
Blister
by Laura Summerville Reed
Did he mean so much to you?
And what about all the rest?
Why do you keep them?
You wave an edge-worn, sprial bound notebook
in my face, and with an accusing finger
you pound the side of a small,
move-weary, taped and re-taped cardboard box.
Your jealousy comes round to visit this place often
stirring up dust, sometimes a storm, a flash-flood,
choking my nostrils and throat with the mud of it
until I scream to take a breath
Your insecurities blister you
when I’ve been too long in the warmth of the sun.
"How could you, how could you
make love to him in a tree?", you say.
I was young, I was quite nimble then,
and I confess, there was a limb
that I balanced against.
but I had to make the climb, nonetheless.
Oh! How I love to draw your glare
when you’ve pressed the mud deep
into the darkened grooves of my brain.
Still I weep for your weeping, blistered love.
"We hadn’t even met then", I say
There was a life before you,
a past,
a history with no baggage in-tow,
only a small, move-worn cardboard box.
And It isn’t yours to drag along.
A better person might not have made
effigies into icons
and flown her memories forward
upon paper airplanes.
I am not that better person.
I write things down.
"Why do you keep them?"
Slumped, dejected, your tempest spent,
or perhaps the eye of the storm.
"I intend to be published one day", I say.
"What will people think, what will people say
If they read this?" you ask.
.
They’ll say, it’s damn fine writing or
they will toss it aside and pay it little heed.
I think there are very few amphibians
reading prosaic poetry. Now do you have
a tree in mind?
I can’t hold my breath underwater any longer.
©LSR 2010