Nathalie step away from your window
The leaves spring early but it is too soon to say
What will come of them
Of this
Hum-hum-humming Your
mother’s call, the great beating
pulse of revolution
Beg upon a hanging rosemary
For the red wave; the yellowed sky-the-folded-hands-upon-a-church-step
Where hopelessness configures small comforts, Where you and I have left
But you cannot stop hearing the drum-drum-drumming,
The promised rings of the bloody spring
Dances her hands along your shoulders
Fate and reprieve she slips on your fingers
That you would recall, you once wrote heresy upon walks of chalk
That you would deny, would refuse, would not take from anyone false hope or prayer
As I once knew you, who would decay one’s own beauty, before taking the ideas of a man
I recall in a mass a simple saying,
“Waiting for the next ball to dropTakes far too much time.”
But the future it comes closer each day
You hear it in mourning
But what can be understood?
Not you, nor I, are holders to the reason of death
Hear the war machines raise the fields
And the crop mice look to the sky
Asking heavens, abandoned to you and I, what they did wrong
A field! A dream
Step to sink, a sudden boom, a delight
The red-and-yellow-embrace, the shrill-siren-shriek of disembodied girls we knew
The black-boots-pounding on the slick-tar-topped-streets oh bizarre-stone-cold-faces of
Men we knew Blew! A sudden boom! Shell-shocked-and a-quiet-louder-than-storms
Your face never looking calmer
A thousand birds retreating their ancestral homes a sign, a fall,
A wave, a goodbye, a new day.
Nathalie, it was you that wrote
One day I would die, leaving you behind
So married in my absence to an idea; this sill, still
Embracing a lover, a gluttony of waiting, a broken-lipped plea for
The streets, a shutter-a quake-the buildings divide-the city mice scatter- triumphant the end is near!
You lean out the window- out the gutters the rats go- with a scutter– I utter a final word- to you how many- years- have- we wasted- no difference- between spring and winter- no more!
You speak open-lipped with dry skin, the strum-strum-strumming of the city walk
From red tongue to touched chin. Hear them! Hear them. The city, a horizon, bent like a stooped man
Receding in the orange and yellow, the red sun-sets-and-rises-there-is-a-message-in-it-it’s-telling
You something; the news, it’s in the news, underneath the ads and marriage announcements, the lost cat
A money trap, There! An old man, hunched, prodding the earth, the sun sets, sways, he sways, you sway, the wind
Delight! We will blow away!
Will you not come to bed, Nathalie, away from the window Nathalie
Nothing more frightening than to lose you
Nothing more exciting, let’s return to what once was
But you do not sleep, you do not rest, my solemn ghost
You cry for the black-gloved-knock-knock-knocking upon our door, He will say, War is here!
You rush to greet him, you grab his ghost, you fancy a dance, I fancy rest, I know you
Do not waltz alone upon the wooden floor, trailing in the white and the seeping moonlight Ever-invading, it brightens your eyes, the corners of your nose where shadows should be, your hands
Long-laced, tangling with the curtain’s face, a dance, a dance. He is there! With glee! No one there!
No one is there! Come to bed, Nathalie.
Your six-foot shadow joins me at the edge, peering, a maddening fore
You smile knowingly out the pane glass, to the French border, the
Basil and curled thyme, two summers dead, a youthful woman’s last fall
A mockery of a man, the shadow turns to shake my hand from the covers
And pulls herself beneath the fold.
The city bells call for morning, it has been too long! I hear a shout.
I see them! I see them! A shout and a call. Gathering your layers, you run for the breaking I see them! I see them! The black-folded sky of storm, the smoke of a visionary’s burn, the tombs of a lifetime in papers, stacked, revolutionary pyre. As the city takes its youngest mice from their beds, And carries them into the storm, no more, no more. You fling yourself from your sill, to the pyre, to the hands, that buried us beneath the earth, 20 years before. I see them! I see them!
Amelia Pozniak is an author from New York where she enjoys the people, the art, and the bagels. She has previously been published in NAME Magazine. In her free time she helps run Mount Holyoke’s literary magazine and hopes to continue publishing her work after she graduates college.
