Death Postures

Portrait Of Elise

Bodega bodhisattva you are the summer. Women who don't taste like you always leave me cold. Snake bite eyes and antivenin lips. Your flesh set fires. How I felt about you is to say like, you made me sweat for the first time and how you made me fall in love with daylight because like the sun I lived to taste your skin. You are a metaphor for finding all the missing pieces in the hands of a beautiful stranger.

You wanted to know the night because your life was full eclipse. So I asked you.

Have you ever seen an Angel? Beneath the white flight feathers is a soft downy gray, it is the same beneath the midnight feathers of their fallen brothers. That was the color of the sky that day. I can still feel the way you held my hand as we set off to a far corner of our small woods. A place where shadows move on their own. You wanted to see an Angel. You wanted to be devoured by the sky.

I saw you collapse in sorrow like a prophet who had forgotten how to pray. You had been the tree of life for me and now it was my turn, so I curled around you like a snake in the garden; to teach you that sometimes in order to be heard our prayers must be uttered with our very last breath. Reticulated grip around your throat, squeezing tighter and tighter and urging you to let go. The way you tensed but didn't fight to break free said everything about the ways in which you loved me. Whispered like thunder in your ears "Try it like this." Tension faded and I watched your soul tearing loose. Stream of consciousness like rubber burning on the highway black top at night.

I didn't let go until you did. The woods went darker than I'd ever seen, and the night opened up like the maw of a great serpent. The dark silhouettes of Angels filled they sky. Your eyes were open and seeing things I couldn't. Time was frozen like a river until your started crying like the Virgin Mary bleeds. The moon broke through the clouds like an eye opening. The Angels were gone then, but you were back. I kissed my own prayers into your tears, to let you know I may have helped you find the door, but whatever was behind it was just for you. Your face was beauty and terror.

Pushing me into the earth and pulling my hands up to your sky you asked "What was that?"

"Magic."