When I was very young we were in Paris and the street vendor said we should buy a small tinny replica of Winged Victory. My mother demurred, said we were going to see “the real thing.”
When we walked into the Louvre and she pointed to it—massive, majestic, breathtaking. I asked how much did that one cost?
She said priceless.
You are my real thing, far more priceless than Winged Victory
I wake with your feather weight along my sternum, papoosed across
My spine
I mourn my inability to save
You from this uncertain and inevitable
Loss
Take you with me everywhere
Haunt me, girl-child
Make me do
impossible things
for love
Long before our terrible story your birthday was already
the feast of Servites pruning winter roses. I cling to that now, all the other days this day could be:
Obstinate mountains lumber into obeisant seas
Lame men whole, blind men see
Dead men rise and shake off their shroudy bindings
impossible things all around ya
If only you will
See
By Ben Lee
I walk these streets and think
My love
But you are not here
I look for you
Around corners
In the cracks of ancient bricks
I descend the hill listening for you
I find the top of the mountain
Look back
At all I’ve traveled
And realize you were with me all along
The tousled child lifts the so-called donut into the light
Examines it and pressed for
Comment, asks, shouldn’t there be
a heart-shaped hole in the middle?
Not often enough
Do I think about the light I cannot see
The whole beings made of it who
Could be standing right beside me
defined by light not visible to me
Or smell, or touch or sound or taste
All senses which could be
Stronger somehow–
A male polar bear can smell a mate from 100 hundred miles away
Sharks can smell single droplets of
Blood in the water miles away
What portion of my human brain is cordoned off for
My sense of Love? How far, how long, how wide a net
Will you cast for me?
I learned a long time ago that even a child can have dark spots, scorched places where
Love should have been
She writes to probe an old wound we share between us
A ghost who walks and spits and curses his proper Maker
What can I say?
What can I tell you that has not already transpired between us?
Only that God can tell a girl to go look
For her little sister (to play)
Then set the captives free
Elealee's Blog 