by Ruth Towne
You ask, Where does it go?
Back to the white-snow abyss, I conjure like an old habit
as easy for the brain as breathing.
Yes, I tried the cures. In French ultramarine,
I watercolored the angel walk on the Côte d’Azur,
I masked myself in black mud, in sulfur and salt, then
waded at midnight into the Blue Lagoon–
but the lust returns. No
matter how many pearlescent sugar pills you swallow, or
x-marked eggs you turn in their incubator womb, that
way of loving will not leave the body.
It beats like a slow pulse, once a second or less.
It recalls cold nights inside me, our unspeakable art.
Slow love in the head, I was not strong enough to not stop
my hair from breaking, in black and brown and white.
I cracked like a bone, my thoughts burned like ice.
In this way, I held myself, centerfold and creased,
feeling, as a creature from some other distant star,
the elemental weight of air, when all left was breath.
The edge of breath–this, all by itself,
offers a scarce and quiet joy, delighting in me, if I
can get there if I can get back.
In soaked wool, with lips blue and limbs numb,
I am cold through the marrow.
For miles, it promises the only open door.
It is a love as simple as wanting to be warm
***
Ruth Towne is an emerging poet. She is the Stonecoast Review’s Co-Editor of Poetry for Issue 21. Other poems from her project Resurrection of the Mannequins have been published by The Lily Poetry Review, Decadent Review, New Feathers Anthology, Coffin Bell Journal, Arboreal Literary Magazine, and Anodyne Magazine.
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