Dear Girl (stranger)

By: Lyda Martin

When I think about you,

Twin candles light up beneath my lungs.

A deadly, divine sort of fire,

And the angels that I read about

The seraphim and nephilim

Ringed with a thousand eyes and chain mail stares.

They see us, and moan, “What changes?

I haven’t seen something different since the last universe.

And even then, it bored me.”

 

I’d like a prescription, please, to some other body,

Some other country, in a neat white pill.

I’ve become tired of myself, and the angels aren’t paying any attention;

No matter how hard 

I wave at the airplanes, they do not see.

 

Girl, do you look for me in the folds?

Do you search for a wavelength in the radio, a red string

That leads from me to you and back again,

You had such sharp scissors yesterday, I was imagining

The red flowers that could grow.

The hissing cicada, a messenger, tells me

“Go. You know Nothing.” 

And I agree with him, and

With Nothing, and with the stark muddines of these waters.

 

We separate, like a dying oyster, 

No pearl, lost in the dark of a Texas beach, 

Do you see the ugly ocean?

Do you smell the illegality of it all?

Sometimes, I think, you do things that unravel you.

And you only let me hold you once.

Let me lasso you 

With a yellow ribbon, and let me 

Keep you so close that our rib cages stitch themselves together

A birdcage with two hearts and a flower,

A red flower that wilts, dripping, onto the yellow sheets.

 

Art piece by Jaden Simmons