The Frog Prince

 

This is how it was that year, after four thousand

winters by the pond.  My brothers falling

from the Egyptian sky.  Bearing the blame

of skin disfigurations for a century.  Knees added

to witches’ broths with incantations.  The jelly

of our blood thickening lakewater.  I witness my misery

reflected in the mirrored eyes of a fly.

If you could have seen

my skin flashing celery-green in the

underwater of mornings, expertly

picking through the most delicate of mosquitoes

and minnows for my table. 

Four thousand and one winters. Surely

now you understand my coldness.

I’ve burrowed through the tangles

of your hair for the last time, dug

into that small frog-space, waited

to feel a breath of kindness from you.

Waited for you to take me under your

sheets, or warm me with your mouth. 

When you wake you’ll find I’ve

left like a thief, taking your precious

golden ball, your silk gloves, the claw-foot

bathtub.

I go out walking, after midnight/In the moonlight, just like we used to do/I'm always walking, after midnight/Searching for you ~Patsy Cline

Mornings, the sheets stained with tar, the soles of my feet smell of asphalt. Thirty-six months of sleepwalking down highway shoulders - If I stop at October, then I'm shredded tires and pages of poetry set on fire. If I end at May, then it's the books of Marx at the bus stop and metaphors found through a camera lens. If I end at December, I have to tell you that once I sold you a story of a ghost who vanished inside a church window. You sealed this vision with silver and a kiss. Even now, the specter's footsteps echo the week before Christmas. Every road is a palimpsest, scraped down into a scar of itself and filled again with a new story by the feet who travel it by night.