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Face to Face

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            We rise to deliver

our final wounds.

 

            I hang from an inward thread,

frayed by storm. You

sit in your chair, plastered

with brittle privacy.

            Neither of us moves to warm the air.

The floor between turns to quicksand

with a thick layer of hovering mosquitoes above.

Anger with a voice too tight to speak

takes the form of ant-like apparitions, covering

our four-corned walls.

 

            It will be done. We will be bone

and nothing else when this is through.

It will not matter,

the scent of our first or final kiss

            for the proud demon-martyrs

embracing our ribs,

taking seat on our laps

have all but swallowed us whole,

conquered.    

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© 1992 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “Medusa’s Kitchen” October 2018

http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2018/10/even-though.html

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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