The End

Posted by Marion Smallwood | Filed under Poetry, Print

The apocalypse stood its full height in your laugh today.
Shoulders as broad as your smile,
collarbone as straight-forward as me sometimes.

It made you throw your head back so hard
I feared it would
break off into my hands.
That your neck would gape at me,
looking pleased and final
as it dubbed your limbs Armageddon,
its sword dull with grief
or quite possibly relief,

I could never really tell the difference, feeling like this.

like my insides are having fits just at the look of you,
like my stomach is pouting angst against feelings
that remind me so much
of never,
and your iris is the color of eyelids juggling the sky
but I can’t count the shades until nightfall fast enough
because you always look away before I do.

But it was only your mouth
that opened like a locket today.
Laying across your face, looking too easily pried
yet happily broken
hanging from the hinges because you were always quick to crack it,
showing your teeth in all their chuckling glory.
It made your lips
hum pictures of the two of us onto my forehead
when you closed them and kissed me
goodbye there.

You told me it was infeasible
for us to end before we start.
But I can’t help but feel like
we somehow skipped those introductions when
you first shook your hand with the curves of my thigh.
acquainted yourself with the skin stretching what seemed like miles
along the ridges of my back
and said hello to the nape of my neck. you kissed it
–twice,
because that’s the way its done where your from.

Let’s just be like
the glow-engraved outline of a full moon
and the sticky sky-blurred edges of the sun.
we don’t have to have a clear beginning or end
let’s just be two people trespassing in each others thoughts
occasionally,
innocent five-year-old hearts
blowing bubbles on each others property
and were just at that age
when we’re to honest not to confess it.

Baby, we are still young,
but don’t you feel like something about us
is forbidden?
Touching you feels an awful lot like playing in the street,
when the lights have already come on
and the way home is plagued with the monsters
only parents are scared of.
your bottom lip like a fruit I couldn’t help but bite into,
eyes closed, blindly trying to guess the way your hands
will navigate the long forgotten passages of my face.

Tell me this won’t end in pieces around us, Armageddon.
that God is not angry with me
for wanting to know what you sleep to
or for knowing that you taste impossible.

I wonder if He’s listening
when our hands are buckled up
and praying to the ground for our feet,
that they won’t be swept
beneath us.
I wonder if He knows that people don’t actually like
feeling like that.

Yesterday,
you left a piece of yourself with me.
You draped it around my shoulders, it was heavy
the same color as lead and uncertainty
You’re now hanging in my closet,
silent, looking complete and prophetic
so i know one day I’m going to have to give you back.
And i know you will tell me
not to be afraid,
that it is not feasible for us to end before we start
but I’m going to finish this poem, the same way it began,
just in case:
The apocalypse stood its full height in your laugh today.

Permalink | Other posts by Marion Smallwood| December 20th, 2009

2 Responses to “The End”

  1. Janday Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    that last line made me shiver. that’s a good good thing

  2. illy Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 12:08 pm

    so much

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