A Quantum Leap.
Posted by Chloe Wayne | Filed under '09 Spring: Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
Some nights, I lay alone and listen to opera.
The same song over and over again, a man and a woman-
I’m not really sure what they’re saying,
but there’s something about the way her voice rises…
wraps around his like ivy creeping up a stone spiral staircase to the heavens-
I imagine her singing of space and time unwinding
in obsidian whirlpools of his eyes,
of grandfather clocks with arthritic hands struggling to inch by,
dilating time – so they can grow old together, and then older.
I know nothing of 18th-century Italian,
but my mind shapes the contours of his heartstrings behind the melody,
and I think he replies-
‘I want to be the only one who knows
what the creaking of your elbows sounds like at sunrise,
let me hold your hand
and we’ll tightrope walk the equator,
then land safely in the familiar safety of our bedsheets.’
…I don’t really know what you think of me…
can’t quite sense the heat behind your lantern smile,
so if you won’t use its flicker to guide me,
I hope you don’t mind if I inch in a little bit closer.
See, I’d like to believe that real-life love must be as simple as it is for those two lovers,
storybook ending etched lifeline deep into Father Time’s palms-
but poets are only good at reading passion in pages and song
so hopeless romantic that I may be,
I can’t seem to read your mixed signals
no matter how often I play them on repeat.
I’ve been in love twice,
and learned that love is a four-ton pendulum
that sways to the fickle eight-count of two heartbeats
only to be knocked off-balance by distance or mistrust or wild oat sowing
or all of that other bullshit
that’s made every relationship I’ve ever witnessed
dangle precariously in the balance-
love, pendulum that it is,
but I’m just looking for someone to stand still with.
You…frighten me,
you hide behind jigsaw puzzle eyes,
you…with your ribs as window blinds-
I’ve never met a flower so afraid of the sun,
come undone,
be an unraveled stem -
spill the cherry blossoms from your gut
like red wine leaking from a paper cup-
’cause I know love comes and goes like the seasons,
but it’s springtime…
this mid-April breeze is feisty,
rustling its way through our clothes a little bit inappropriately.
The sun is shining like she’s got electromagnetic mascara for rays,
and I could have sworn, this morning, she batted her eyelashes your way.
It’s a time for flirting–
heartbreak and fear were so last season,
so today, I just wanna hold your hand.
Let’s be kids again, cavalier, unafraid of anything
but our own reflections in the mirror-
we’ll pretend its prom night,
and we’re fashionably late to a red carpet of rose petals,
firefly strobe lights and a dance floor of clementines.
Let me fashion my lips as rock climbers,
and I’ll scale the ridges of your cheekbones
then lay softly in the willow hammock of your dimples.
I just want to bite into this awkward silence like an overripe peach,
and have all those nervous conversations that we’ll laugh at when we’re thirty
and you’ve memorized the freckle coordinates on my skin,
and I’ve played cartographer to you,
mapped your blue Nile veins
and that meteorite scar tissue you keep shrouded
from every stranger in your stratosphere.
I’ve circumnavigated you for months,
but there’s something empty about living weightless -
so if you see a satellite in your skyline,
it’s me— I’m tired of hovering.
Just about ready for that quantum leap
so orient me,
compass-rose kiss a bag of wind in my direction.
Have it whistle me an opera.
One Response to “A Quantum Leap.”
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eugenia Says:
July 9th, 2011 at 5:19 amStumbled on this poem a while back an have since fallen in love with chloe wayne_these words found me an painted what I was going through_so every once in a while I take listen n some peace comes my way_thank you for that_
