Illicit
       

I owned your dirty thoughts, lying
in the afternoon shadows. It's 3 pm,
the streets are desolate. The backlit dive
where we met has replaced me with
your new mistress, hair as green as a virus.
Our love got caught in the no-fly zone
of human distancing. The hands that used to pull
my hair from your sweaty face, are now slicing
Pb & j's on the counter. After school sports
and play dates, canceled. My hair is growing
out white, like the finger lakes
in winter, but it's not winter, it's April
and the buds are calling our names.
You once said there was nothing more sublime
than my neckline shadowed against the fire-escapes.
I knew each portal, each cavity your body kept.
There's a reaper in the stairwell, listening
at the doors, keyholing all the despair.
Tonight, you're all in the living room, TV and popcorn.
The cozy family snuggled up. Your wife stretches out,
wearing my ankle bracelet. This pestilence writes
an elegy with toxic ink—A world-wide brush with
death, to tell us, there's no place for lovers in a war zone.

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Copyright © 2022 Cynthia Atkins All rights reserved
from Gargoyle
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission