I think you must have been coded into my very cells,
deeply embedded amongst my DNA,
strands of you coiled around
essential strands of me.
How else this inability
to erase you?
I put you out of my mind,
a tenant evicted, thrown out into empty streets,
a cat let out into the night air,
exiled from home but returned to nature
trying to untame the domesticated
or tame the wilderness.
I put you out of my mind
yet here you are
pulsing in my veins,
streaming hot red through my heart.
Trying not to think of you
my heart beats in three four timing,
your name waltzing in Spanish staccato,
the sharp quaver and grace note,
“my love”
How do I not think of you
when you are the movie’s score,
the opera’s libretto?
I fill my mind with the strains of Mendelssohn’s 64th Opera,
trying to sink you in melancholy ~
an alien landscape for you
hoping you will flee to more familiar terriotory.
You make yourself at home even here
and I find myself smiling your mischievous smile
into the darkness.
I am trying to turn the lights out on you
and your eyes are glowing.
I try to stifle you with silence
and still you sing.
I try to unravel you from my mind,
try to evict you from my home,
try to wipe your fingerprints from my skin,
your laughter from my throat,
your dimple from my face
and in that tiny gesture
of my hand on my cheek
soaking in tears
acknowledging their existence
I feel your touch.
You are still here
inside me
above me
beneath me.
To remove you from my world
is to take the living from my life.
4:53pm Monday
7.July.2003
(Cartoon courtesy of xkcd – go and check out his work and be sure to keep an eye on the alt text/titles he’s added to each!)
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- Parting Words
- I miss your laughter…
- Hope Fell Apart: Blood and Tears
- Adultery
- I Am Sorry For Your Passionless Nights
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Stumble it!
You accuse me of theft.
How can one steal what was given?
Call me home wrecker; say I took a battering ram
to the fortress of your love, smashed the windows,
snuck off with your valuables
while you slept.
The only true thing there is, yes, you were asleep
and while you had your eyes closed
he opened the door
crammed diamonds and rubies into my soul,
gave pre-Raphaelite light
to my eyes,
filled my senses full of honey,
offered up Rilke to my ears,
Chopin to my body,
Neruda to my heart.
Say I shattered your trust.
He broke it long before my arrival on the scene.
I showed up and the tables were overturned,
the drawers emptied out and strewn across the room
as though at a market bazaar.
His heart, soul and mind were on display amongst the treasures.
No price tags. He was giving them away
and his mouth was a smiling, wide
open
door.
I stole nothing.
He was given.
4:30pm Saturday
12.November.2005
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
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Stumble it!
You’re breaking my bones with your soft tongue
flaying skin from soul with your eyes
and your absence
is worse.
Addiction, craving, tremors of withdrawal
I’m screaming at the ceiling, clawing at the windows
as the house implodes
upon me.
Too sensitive to touch, frustration makes me feral
I’m pacing the perimeter of the cage
I have more distance in me
than room.
5:17pm Monday
12.July.2004
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- If You Came Back I Could Tell You So Many Things…
- A Void
- Remind Me
- Letting You Go Again And Again And Again
- Disarray (explicit language)
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Stumble it!
Siamese
hip to hip
inseparable.
You grew into me
put down roots
and flourished.
Siamese
hip to hip
inseparable.
I share your heart beat
with the world
Sweat
or tears
run from my face
sheathing you
in wetness.
Do we bleed now?
This unholy separation?
Do we bleed?
Your whispers used to brush my ear
Your fingers used to tangle in my hair
I breathed in
your every exhalation
and now
now I am asphyxiating
and blood runs
torn away without formal surgery
no anaesthetic
Goodbye is a razor slicing down between us.
Siamese
hip to hip
lip to lip
inseparable
Oh, the marvels of the modern world
that you could be parted from me
Goodbye is a scalpel.
4:37pm Thursday
26.August.2004
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- A Life In The Day Of…
- I miss your laughter…
- No Return Address
- Hope Fell Apart: Blood and Tears
- Today
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Stumble it!
The number of photographs on the mantelpiece multiply
Those taken of myself with another,
friend or lover,
fade to sepia
and the babies
become disproportionate teenagers,
gangling giraffe legs
thrusting their heads into cumulous clouds
of possibility,
their hearts and minds
not yet grown to match
and fill the cavities which hold them.
I’m trying to abstain from sadness
and veer sharply away
from the self pity
that, of the growth represented in each frame,
none is mine to watch over,
nor mine to take pride in.
I can love in the absence of blood ties.
None of my photographs
capture potential
or hope.
For others, yes.
For myself, no.
I would like just one of those images
to be a seed
that will flourish
into new life
and some sort of legacy.
I would be every bit as satisfied
if just one of those photographs
captured a spark
that would flare incandescent,
become a conflagration,
sear the frame to ash
and set my whole world to flame;
the moment caught in still life
but far beyond
containment.
I’d happily burn the house down
just for that one moment
of heat.
9:28pm Sunday
19.January.2003
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- The Garden
- It Ends In Silence
- II. What Lives Between Us
- III. Seventy Percent Water And A Full Moon
- I. Piercing The Sound Barrier
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