Semana Santa (Holy Week)
Oh, lay me down, would you please,
I’m so tired and I don’t know anymore
what to do with me. So lower me down,
if you would, to the cobbled street,
and cross my arms at the wrists,
and lift me up—if you could—
in the space between your feet, with a grip
of many hands rising to many shoulders.
I’d fit so well in a kind of twilight,
when the sun sighs the sky
to purple like a luminous bruise,
and certain birds sing songs so sad
they’re also beautiful. And I’d be that,
or something like it, fit for a procession,
held at the hilt of your necks as we went
down the blocks of the blushing city.
We could drape ourselves in lilac silk,
and sway along with high candles
that warmly wept their silent ends,
those delicately effaced white traces,
lacing our fingers wax, a touch of death,
as my ribcage ached its thousand hurts,
softly dripping one tear at a time,
kept by the metronome of my heart.
It’s dark out at the windowsill, and the saints,
they’re hiding beneath the black veil
of the starry universe, so if they’re watching,
all we know is the pressure of their presence
and not its warmth, which is for later days,
which lately I’m so lonely for, despite myself,
and which sits with me like a promise
that also has the taste of farewell.
Who can say tomorrow, I mean speak the words,
except by a halting index that points
at what it isn’t, where the page is the hour
that perpetually turns, and where I want
so much I seem to bleed a beat pounding
in my ears—oh tragedy, but with a filagree
of something lovely, and where I need,
if only for a moment, for you to carry me.
Requite
I have a secret thought of you.
Which I keep here in my hand,
held behind my back. Or maybe
in a closed fist tucked in my pocket,
so you can’t see it if you look.
It’s sunset over an old forest with gnarled trees,
and you’re next to me, and I can see my shadow
fall across your shoulder as you laugh,
and suddenly I feel the sharpness
of my wanting to put my cheek there.
I don’t know if you want that, too.
And if I asked, would my asking hurt?
Does my desire itself invade your space,
do I intrude, do I press myself too closely
here, an arm’s length away from you?
We are a ruined church in the dark
and the green, naked without its walls,
cracked ribs of archways all exposed.
Beautiful. And becoming something else,
a more, curling around what was before.
Do we reach together to a gothic point,
like praying fingers that lift to touch
one another? Or am I that lonely
leaning column without the grace
of a corresponding face?
I understand, maybe better than most,
what it’s like to be hijacked
by someone else’s wishing, how autonomy
vanishes like a gasp in the low light,
and how hard it is to get back again.
Sometimes at night my mind conjures
a hundred abstracted fantasies of you, of me—of us,
glass flames in the periphery. I lay there,
almost in pain, refusing to look at them,
because I don’t want to dream in your place.
And sometimes you laugh,
and I look your way,
and you’re like wind through
the colored glass of my dreams,
which spin and touch and sing
something wonderful.
