Poetry & Prose

Maxim’s I

The room I am borne into is

one of fairytales and frost-covered

clouds, and the sky points to

something that isn’t there. 

Sleep arrives like a 

blindfold and salt.

The strange cymbals of sound and

of hearts and diamonds; 

the turbulence of all things

unsaid, the seas unstill. 

As they sing—

The hero slays the chimera. She splits

the set of two, she swallows

the sword, and success, and success, and

nothing. She stares towards the horizon,

blue and black and barely brown in rising, 

and swears she smells that same beast. 

The wind whistles past until 

everything is a river. 

It rains here even on a

cloudless day. 

Let me start again—

I miss the thoughts that I

don’t have. But winter shall run off

and good weather come 

again. Every day I sew more thread

onto the tapestry of our life. For me,

red. For you, the color of Friday. 

I want my love to stretch past the corner

of your ear, where it can live 

in your hair forever and ever

until you wake to the smell of 

my homecoming. A light flickers on

and off. I follow you until my teeth find tail.

When you see me tonight, please

know that I look away.