Alive

In every dress, you were a spectacle,
Upheld in every dim shop light, as lace curtains split,
And your body moves coyly beneath,
To be flattered by the lack of speech outside.

Yet your thin white frame beneath,
That you held in such esteem,
Is slowly subsiding to a ballet of principles,
As little insects carry away your healthy cells,
Haul them like leafcutter ants,
Severing your life, like careless vegetable limbs.

Did not that tremble add to the performance?
The weakness, perfect the dance,
And the ache you know in your lips,
How they pursed so even in sleep,
Drawing tight around unspeakable fears,
Your teeth filtering the escaping sighs.

How we both became victims,
Like hurtful poems in each others blood,
Like jealous playthings, put away,
When children grow,
When they forever quit from play,
And instead work their magic stuff,
For every pale eye behind the dim shop windows.

Perhaps it WAS best to write our survival story first,
Before we started to live again,
Before the uncomfortable treatments began,
Before we started to try that long road,
Maybe to love again,
Or learn not to love all the time.

Maybe to love when the time was right,
And shut it up when the chapter is done…