Late Valentine

My darling, I have imagined you dead,
or worse, dying in my arms, a tragic
victim of the gods' cataclysmic magic,
the eternal scissors grazing your thread
with an icy misstep and a long fall
or the city chimneys' subtle poison,
or a murderer paroled from prison,
secondhand smoke, a stray shard of shrapnel.
And so tonight I touch your face and pray
the three sisters will kill us together,
fusing our molecules into one slow dance,
in death as in breath, cold choice and hot chance
tuning our voices to the tornadic weather
it takes to love long and perish each day.

Copyright © 2002 Derick Burleson All rights reserved
from lyric
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission