There Will Be Nights Like These

I first heard this poem read by the author in a strange Australian poetry house. I have read it a dozen times since, and while I do not generally like long winded quoting and I generally don't cut and paste, I want to share it with you.


There will be nights like these
when all you hear
is the asynchrony of our mouths -
the words we do not say
and the questions we do not ask hanging
in the cold aid above our heads
or lining the sill, growing damp.

There will be nights like these
when all you feel
is the anonimity of our skin,
the distance gathered in like
tangled sheets
which the other has never known

and I will lay curled like a fist,
every part of me twisted away
from your perfect mouth yes
there will be nights like these.

But there will be others -

my fingers uncurling and tracing your face
the white flag unfurled and you bracing
the dark with your sweet thieving hands
moving dog-sly and fox-quick and
the blockade in me breaks as if fashioned
of matchsticks stuck with grief so used up that
it crumbles when breathed on
and you tread underfoot
all the heart-rent and long-gone
as I lay down my weapons
you call the parade through
and I'm lifted and lost
at the surge and the sight of you

I'm lifted and lost to
our bodies so close
that the first pale blade of light
slipped under the blind
finds no purchase to separate
your limbs from mine on my word
we will wake like that.

Stay with me.


There Will Be Nights Like These
by Josephine Rowe.

You can find her, and this poem, here http://www.cherryfoxmantle.com/#.