I remember when your tongue was too embarrassed to meet on vertical effectual exchanges or maybe I was just too forward and my tongue had other intentions, but just to hear the laughter I would concoct stories of Homeric value to captivate your interest if only for a moment. And my mind would linger on the thought of your shadow that would allude me in a thick forest of roses and cherry blossoms, where I had lain down my weapons and armor and exposed myself, but I fell into a sea of sailing which I created, or he created, or will create. Luckily I can swim, but with water so clear and so sorrowful I could not see the bottom, but I would put them in a bottle and save it for later. Back on Earth, I stood next to you, I stood behind you, I stood next to you, I stood in front of you, and you didn’t notice me. Not until I sat next to you on rides upward to short to decipher the eons and epochs in your eyes or to measure the length of your legs. I wanted you. It was so hard to stand still as people and sunlight pass me from East to… West, from East to… West, from East to West ready to reset itself and this was to indeed be your season. On late nights of Doritos and beef sticks the air was too hot and thick to sustain the chastity of youth and the order was given to assault the pure fountains and pluck the gardens. Ones that I desecrated with extreme malice and I stripped you of the golden rings that you finally pulled for yourself… and you wept, and I laughed, which made your head shake in agreement, in discourse. I lay in your glory, this undiscovered isle of fruit and wonder, made me a pure virgin again, a child. The unseen waters gathered on my chin, and left trails on cheeks of rose and chocolate, or caramel. Red and brown soft all over to Mario’s braid my hair smoking a cigarette that was minus the nicotine and plus the THC and you told me that I was your first, even though the silk sheets slid under you the crushed roses left no stains, but I was your first you said, and I believed you… then we would study and make love on mattresses that only had room for you and me and love, in the green glare from the stereo track 2 or John Legend track 11 so high. This is where you dress me in your father’s pants and hat only to pretend. We tried to enter the suite, but it was only for lovers only and we were still just too young, to play with the glass chess pieces of the living room coffee table, in the living room with the white furniture and the white carpet and walls which were all untouchable, and too tall to climb, all we could do was watch and wait until someone gestured to us to come in briefly, first my mother, and then your mother reluctantly agreed, but summers would prove too long for us and I succumbed to temptation once or twice before the day of freedom which was my first anniversary, but not our anniversary, a toast was given to days of solitude where the strawberry wine flowed as the Nile that led to Cleopatra, for whom I wage war, on land and on sea. I still have the two arrows lodged in my heart, damn the winged baby, damn the Harpies and the nymphs, and the Sirens that cause my blood to boil to run hot. And here we are back to front, front to back for the night again, proving that the spoon does exist on planes of blankets and fitted sheets and pillows and roses, with staff in hand I parted rosy seas to salvation, I clothed you in strawberries and snakeskin, but you refused to allow yourself to be captured on canvases smaller than the sky, the paint streaked paths to your feet, sunken already to become the ground, your blossoms always smelled the sweetest, so I picked the cherries and the strawberries and threw them onto the white walls and white furniture and glass chess pieces, making them a little more juvenile, and buying us a little more time… for a change.

© 2008 Chester Stoney III