Chess Match Aftermath

Posted by Justin Reilly | Filed under Announcements

“till the end, I will love you till the end, I will love you…till My end….will I?”

I remember the first time you winked at me
Looked a like a pair of school children
Holding hands, perched a top your eye lids
I’ve never seen unity like this in pupils

never seen rain drops form lip to lip around an eye lash
as if to say
all those “what should have been’s” and “could have been’s”
lost meaning a long time ago
I’m here now
Here to show you what love smells like
Open your nostrils
Let me in
You see…I’ve been in the kitchen a long time now
Cooking up nostalgia and something that tastes like chicken
You gotta learn somehow right?

I have a trial and errored soul
A heart with stretch marks
A tattered rib cage full of wingless butterflies
I thought it counted being beautiful on the inside
That there is nothing I couldn’t stomach
My stomach
Loved that joke

And you were patient
A child waiting for his grandfather to find the keys
A battered wife
At a women’s shelter
God
Waiting for Adam and Eve to fuck up

Inevitable and yet strangely apologetic
I must have looked like the 5 yr old standing over the anthill
Burn marks don’t heal as easily if you only have one limb to lean on
Lean on me
Lean on us
Lean on an intertwined limbed conversation in the park on that Sunday
A baseball game in the middle of the summer
The first time I told you how mike died

August couldn’t have come soon enough
And our fall left us with the leaves

Left you bitter as a sailors wife, widowed on Christmas
And rightly so
The wind in your hair, never seemed so refreshing
Until I’m standing on a light house
Trying to throw poems into the dark
What if I was never coming back?

What if the only thing we remembered?
Was the first time we made love?
Can an orgasm
Mend a broken heart
One night stands of sweat
Dripping in between bricks like mortar
There is nothing strong here
Nothing worth singing about

Just crippled hands amidst a missed step or two
Falling
Never seemed so easy

Write me a poem
On the back
Of the only picture we ever took
Something fiery and short
And sign it sincerely
The last girl
He will ever yell at

Ps Sometimes I do miss you, even if I swear on my life that I never do

I pray these ice chips in my chest
Find somewhere else to dwell
Or crystallize
Into something a little more beautiful than a heart beat
I don’t have room enough for the cold
And I know you
You don’t want to be in this chess match aftermath
Anymore than I do
But sometimes Kings and Queens
Just wait the entire game to be taken

And maybe that’s the point
Love is worth waiting for
And beauty worth fighting for

We earn every badge
Every scar
Every love tap

None of this was meant to happen
And yet
Everything
Everything happens for a reason

There is a rainbow smile in our drag race chaos
We just have to stop the motor long enough to breathe it in
Let it linger on our lips
Like God is our Dentist
Placing Relief flavored fluoride on our gums
Flossing with Grace

There’s nothing to be afraid of Young Queen
Smile
Like you did
On the first day we met

Permalink | Other posts by Justin Reilly| April 7th, 2010

2 Responses to “Chess Match Aftermath”

  1. Marion Smallwood Says:
    April 24th, 2010 at 6:05 am

    this is absolutely beautiful, so many beautiful lines. so honest.

  2. Princess Taverna Says:
    June 26th, 2010 at 2:13 am

    Beautiful! I have watched your performances on Youtube. I especially like the one you performed with Josh Bennett entitled ‘Women”. I’ve watched and listened to it several times. Wish I could have a copy of that poem too. :)

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