Remnants of What Never Were

Lana Cortes

Winter is central to your language

Cotton fingers form blissful chokeholds

around childlike innocence 

I cling to it 

with ivory knuckles 

to contest white lies 

Swing through my mind with licorice veins

& sea glass secrets 

I’ll bow for you 

to plant seeds in my head

& pick flowers from my hair

using the hand less occupied

with what’s laced through its curvature

I come to you in velvet truth

from head to heel

You say

the Sun lives too brightly to look at

or to hold

& I’m much like the Sun

Fiery eyes tell a tale of a path less walked

& how I’ve tread it twice

If you’d hold still

I’d know which way your conscience swings

A passenger in your skin

You travel so fast

you don’t move

& always return

Dissolve into the room

& come back around 2’

Your cool palms feel at home

gliding from my wrists

up to my shoulders

& you sigh your speech into my neck

Tell me again

how I wear too much mascara 

& reveal too much beneath my clavicle 

& how you wish I wouldn’t run off 

to find a home within heaven

each night that you take me

With a half-hearted hold

your next victim on speed dial

fingers slip unapologetically 

in a senseless departure 

I make my way to the door & you call out

something about a good run

& what could have been

if any part of you

had wanted to stay

But what good are the sounds of the sea

without the song of its correlating winds

twisting through frosty matted locks

& sunburned knees?

Without the delicious sting of salt on the lips

& the cliff-side thrashing of waves

whistling about the tunnels of the eardrum?

Without the dance of golden rays 

embracing the flesh

& the tickle of dazzling droplets 

cascading like rivers

from pools on its surface?

What good are my warmest thoughts of you

when I no longer know your heat?

What good are the photographs

when they’re the only ones we’ll ever have?

The wafting aroma of strawberry curls

& I’ve lost you for the evening

I read your movements front to end

You assure me this is no place for a girl

who waits 

Crimson catacombs house an unsteady pace

I find myself once more 

salivating over honey

dripping past your chin

I catch her steal a taste

& you move in to spill some more

I’ve been told

the forbidden fruit reigns sweetest

You have enough in your garden 

To keep her coming back

To keep me coming back

I’ll fight it with my silk dagger

& you don’t shiver at the sight of blood