In Time

My lovers jut out of photographs

like broken bones. In time, I will shrug them off

coolly, pack them off like bad children

running away from home. In time

they will not hurt me.

My twenty-year old lover on a keyring

has a smile like a shattered plate.

I liked his crooked ways, his broken lips

were a masterpiece put back together.

I feel his mouth out of photographs

blowing my perfumed neck,

sucking my petalled ear;

my ivory skin was a china doll’s

his grandmother kept by the bed.

I pressed to his light like a flower.

He hardened to pockets of rubies.

My boy from the glittering seashore

gleams like mother-of-pearl,

the water forever rolling

over his hairless chest, smooth

and brown as an almond. His feet grow

upwards from sand-dunes, his body

a spreading tree. I pluck at the dangling fruit;

remember the taste of sin

as it clung to my mouth like lemons.

I wore the same china doll dress,

only this time he called me a siren.

Thrilled with my dangerous legs.

Stupid girl—

in years I will find them in sepia,

discover an old dress

like pulled seaweed, drained of the girl

who has outgrown the full-length mirrors

but waltzes forever in frames.

In time I will haunt his old body,

find it stooped like a reed.

Despite myself, count all my fingers

searching the tomb of his mouth.

My watch ticks on, medicinal.

In time I will slip on old ballgowns,

pick at a pearly old wound.