Trying to describe my lover & I wish it had been this way
By Elodie Barnes
Trying to describe my lover
in another language:
I say that we share skin
we share an umbrella
we share rain.
Every morning I wake up
in the dark
lying next to a shadow,
our breaths still woven together
and drifting —
They say
don’t you mean a body?
No, a shadow.
Another language permits me
to say these things;
my lover is beauty played out
in a minor key,
something my mother tongue
cannot understand.
I wish it had been this way
This is what we did on the rooftops, the five of us: we’d wait until the night was thick with rising city and falling sky and heat that draped itself around chimney pots. We’d take beer, or wine if we were feeling posh, and climb up to sit among the stars. There were never many of them. Too much light pollution. But the ones we could see intoxicated us, unsettled us. Too much sweetness. A melody of voices.
She was our friend, but she stole from all of us on those nights, seconds that she didn’t think we’d notice, the camera shutter too soft to be heard. Who would care? One here, one there. One after the other to make a gathering of nights, a summer that wouldn’t vanish with the leaves.
Once, she took one from me that I’d wanted to keep: a second that held a private thought, a longing, a desire that I’d planned to hold close before scattering it into a million pieces over the skyline. Why? No answer. Someone had brought a candle that flared in the darkness. I asked her to burn it, that second. I wanted her to scorch a tiny hole in the collage of summer
and I felt it go, with the same unbearable sweetness as the stars.
but she kept it. She has it still.
Elodie Barnes is a poet and essayist who can be found writing in France, Spain or the UK (usually mixing up her languages). Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and she is Books and Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform. Find her online at http://elodierosebarnes.weebly.com, and on Twitter @BarnesElodie.