(The Sounds Of Earth)
Rachel Lime
Tonight, each dark shape is a dead animal
On the roof, I saw the corpse of a dog at my feet
Then a deer, its legs dangled over the ledge
I talk a lot about a lot of things
Self-hatred, UFOs, loneliness
I talk and talk and talk, and still my bedside is expectant
Whose shape would I call forth from the night
If I had such a moonly power?
I thought of them today
They told me a fable about the philtrum
We kissed, in the basement of the chapel
Not them, though I grew thirsty for their eyelashes
Nor him, the blue-eyed exam
Nor her, the forlorn marble
Perhaps you, you latest daythought
It is summer, which is our season
I drank too deep from the cup of my memories
The bottom was only a mirror, and I couldn’t peer past myself
To find your shoulders, turning away
No, the thing I would summon has nothing like a name
It is nothing like a person
Though a man once wore its shadow
And brimmed me with desert stars
It is nothing like a place
Though I have walked the rain-black woods
And the mud is still on my feet
It is nothing like a time
Though it is often past midnight, and full-mooned
It is probably death
But I don’t want to die
I don’t want you, I want your peaches
The ones we ate in your wide white bed
The bitter skin split between my teeth
My whole July turned sweet