Christina and the Great Barrier Falling
This is how it should have gone.
I lend you my gas mask. The rudderless
dark pitches a fit. You wink at me.
I am disillusioned by the brisk gesture,
how it blades into the shadows of a poison
I can't recall. You do not fear fear.
Or the absence of the plastic mouth
I take back to kiss, with all the newfound
faith of one shook by a death rattle.
You pinch your nose. Eyes
a stiff pleat. You could be stifling
a bourgeois curse, a clap of laughter.
Your clavicle, bone-straight around
the soft pouch, sucks deep
on a breath count. This is your body's
manly confession. You are not really
here, but miles upward, serenely afloat,
your life swimmingly free of all others.
The sharks do not eye your mind,
but I eye the body. My slow fist
is oceanic in its cruelty and just enough.
The body releases. Ebbs like a gravity
defied blow. I watch you now, now,
now and now. Then, no more.
© 2009 Melanie Firth
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