Donna Vorreyer is the author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as six chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish from Redbird Chapbooks. She is a poetry editor for Extract(s), and her second collection is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2016. ---------
Preamble
When we meet again, you notice
something in the air - lilacs
or lullabies, a subtle change
in the horizon’s line.
This is desire when it’s new.
We bind ourselves with cloth
and promises, leather bands
that tether us wrist to wrist,
knots wetted against unraveling.
We say they can’t be broken.
We know this is a lie, know
that every paired or melded
thing returns to pieces. Still
we tremble, never sated.
We feast on this believing.
I Put False Hope in Celestial Bodies
Your orbits are erratic, strange parabolas of leaving
and returning, vast galaxies of lapis and ashes,
the usual promise of communication, but I have not
seen it –no flares, no comet tails, no meteor showers.
Light years away, you crush the moon to craters,
then draw close but never touch me. I wish I could say
you were the sun I revolve around, gathering warmth
with each rotation. Instead you are only some alien
shimmer in Orion’s belt, not of this world or that one,
depositing your dust then disappearing. Still, I map
out constellations, look for patterns in the atmosphere,
connect each black hole breath, each five-pointed scar.
The Wind Lulled and It Commenced Raining
and we were glad for we had prayed
for rain, for reason to huddle inside.
For shelter. For these little solaces
of moans and sighs, this cabin witness.
Hard boards on a hard bed, still lust
was the best tonic for forgetting. We lost
ourselves until we were quite beyond
logic. Branches scraped the walls,
kept watch while we wrestled and
bucked inside and then the rain stopped.
You carved our initials into the logs
of the walls. Territorial markings.
I rubbed my neck, the burn of bruises
blooming beneath the skin, badges
of our savage longing. I named all
of these things enough.