Loveliest Grotesque

I kept the little ruin near me, I stowed it in the kitchen,
it sat in the pantry, like a jar of reddest jam,
it sang me songs of seafaring, it said the "weather being fine,"
I listened to it breathe, shiver brokenly in time,
I believed a multitude stood between us, four seasons,
the meaningless physical world, and a grammar primer,
you could see how I found it necessary,
with its immodest appeals, its constant state of déshabillé,
it is small for its age, it is too wide-awake,
so my sewing came undone with the years,
I stalked myself to the open door, the unlatched gate,
ma petite is a world sold of charms, it loves a new act,
has a leer for a mouth, has indecorous energy,
I ran from the spring glee of it, I radioed ahead,
oh I unplanned a lifetime, turned my gaze to the west,
but then it said it would make something of us both,
the sound of it touched me, fat in its cracked sadness,
it was homemade all along, it was oddly necessary,
I looked back like Lot's wife, like the exhausted mirage
that I was, and the loveliest salt taste was whelming us,
both awash in a light of knives, and the wind it was shifting like this—

Copyright © 2007 Sandra Lim All rights reserved
from Loveliest Grotesque
Kore Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission