From Coconut

SENTENCE

I close my eyes and in one senseless jump
embrace my new found love, the zero ground
of unprotected feet, sumptuous
singular, lonely, flight. The very last sound
I hear is a hum, or ringing, calling me back
from this strange pre-conscious state. I awake
to be gripped by a cardiac
terror, breathless and sweating I try to wake
you, you heavy with your own dark trouble
and regardless, yet not uncaring, of me
here beside you, the cunning double
of a lover who wishes to be free.

But as the trap-door in the scaffold floor
needs the feet of the condemned to swindle,
so too do you need me, before
argument and after excess, all unhinged
at the threat that you might withdraw
and leave me, who forsook my liberty
that I might smell your hair, hanging withal.
Answered by silence I refused to be,
though I’m the condemned you’ll answer me—
in verse at least, as my pen, if not my heart,
knows you, and knows that you will say to me:
you’re the door, dear, the condemned is my part.

© Jennifer Moxley 2006