Some women would remember the rain
pelting the cobblestones of a French city without consequences,
like the skitter of fingernails across a lover’s back
in the unfamiliar iron bed, the narrow mattress
stripped clear of memory, white as dawn.
All those times when daring
to do a thing meant more than the very feeling.
Others would picture the steam afterwards
rising from shared cups of bitter chocolate,
how it left curls of mist like soft locks of hair
on the windows closed against winter.
These women would hold themselves, later,
rubbing their arms as if before a fire,
wrapped in the sweet regret of evaporated warmth.
And there are others, not to be forgotten,
who already know what they could learn
from the taste and tangle of pure bodies,
the aching places
salt-slippery as Chinese mushrooms,
rubbed skinless like crushed red berries.
The roses in the drained bottle are already bowing,
bending, it seems, under a thin shaft of light,
red petals edged with a brown craquelure,
like tendrils of hair, around the folded center.
Such last women
travel, or don’t travel.
Night turns into day, each time. There may be
a warm head on the pillow beside them,
on a separate pillow.
No one can stop them from dying
with their secret: life’s all about knowing
the kind of loss you have a talent for.
Originally Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 2.
