I.
In chaptered flow the rain came
Through autumns ashes swept away in even tide
She was sitting at the fringe of a maelstrom
Drinking a vodka gimlet with a twist of lime
She was obsessively early
I maintained a fashionable tardiness

I ignore the echo of "I've read this book before"
Lighting her cigarette with a casual aloofness
Immune to the wallflowers and envious jibes
Of a bartenders last call,
And anyone else's last chance

We paused at a crosswalk reading fifteen seconds
Of alcoholic collusion, where the singular flow of traffic
Was deemed inconsequential
Falling silent in musing, she turned to me with a smile of askance
Wearing a streetlamp halo and a disregard for triviality

"I came not for a silhouette of precarious countenance.
Become flesh again, so that I may read your eyes."

And I walked again through the harlot phrasings
Of graffiti etchings ablaze on condemned walls
Falling into her welcome gaze to be petrified
Like an ice sculpture melting at her touch
I wept.

Her mascara bled like a charcoal portrait gone awry
In empathetic gestures of nothingness we waited
Until the rainstorm stopped and we were satisfied

"At your request, I have patiently waited for sunrise.
Though, at this moment I am famished."

II.

Bravo, bellissimo! She waves her opera glasses accordingly
Through stagefright and wafting curtains, I regard her fair visage
Studiously, in portrait vanity, beneath a dim and cold apparition
Of haunting accolades and wilting roses at my feet

The cheering echoes fade with no encore
I face a .38 caliber love-letter unsigned
Smelling of mescaline and saline interred
Blurring the lines in false gravity

"I wanted to express the depths of my feelings
Without your eyes penetrating my soul.
They cut through my defenses while I am making excuses for my transgressions."

A wayward wind and nothing else, I mused from the blindside
A mistaken parchment from a secondhand source
I challenged its veracity
And I lost.

Lipstick messages in bathroom mirrors scrawling suicide
I thought a ruptured love in rapture would repair
A mending heart fractured exponential
When every crack led to her

III.

"The morning will come, when the mourning stops." she whispered to my ego
While kissing my eyelids shut
She places a finger to my lips
As if unworthy of my tongue, or afraid to understand

Watching from my balcony as she departs
Despairingly I wrench my heart in quiet anguish
As the moonlight drenches her body in splendor
While making kaleidoscopes of her eyes
She blows hollow kisses and finger waves goodbye

"So long, my once and future love..." she murmurs as if forgiveness
Was a given or clairvoyance was her gift.

I clutch the rail begging to forget
To find the River Lethe and with it sanctum
To drown in amnesiac solace

"When we danced in pristine steeples of unbound love;
I only found comfort. In his eyes I found danger.
Yet when I kiss him...
I still taste you."