I.
Eve, you were different then.
You dove into the dervish dance
with your sexy angry red layers of dress
flapping like capes around you,
hiding you
revealing you
concealing you.
I joined you,
and we twirled
together lost
in the storm
of red silk
cycloning us.
We spun
we leaped
from tabletop
to tabletop,
lightning and thunder
flashing and cracking
in our hearts.
Faster and
faster
we whirled
until the fabric around us burst
into fiery birds of prey.
They swooped and rose up high above
they ate away the canopy exposing
the creamy blue sky.
II.
Who is this revenant woman who answers my dark dreams,
lies beside me with her black fingernails brushing the hairs
of my forearms and whispers new worlds in my ear, worlds
not of tranquil ponds and green meadows hailing down kites,
but a valley of ashes and black streams choking on bones?
Whose bones are these? Are they the lies of yet another war?
Her voice permeates the valley, “No. They are nothing so epic
or impersonal as the wars of men or the fallacies of bureaucrats.
They are a breathing riddle whose answer will not set you free
but through their paths will send you as a new creation to me.”
III.
If not for the ash that falls so politely
I would swear I am in Willamette Valley,
a valley of memories of bicycle rides,
of kayaking under the looming trees,
their backs bent over the local creek.
My sister and I strolled the bike paths
talking of a future beyond college,
beyond being single, beyond youth.
The ashen valley shudders and morphs;
The creek is no more and the valley deepens.
I recognize this place too: it is Sorrento Valley
when I was much older, more lonely with no family.
I worked at a medical tech start-up, not yet ripe
but filled with potential, promises, and stock options.
It was there I met a little Italian doctor who had
traveled the world and whose kindness cracked
me open, who embodied what is best in people.
The sky bows, and the ash stops its polite descent.
Where the sky bowed a path unrolls like a tongue.
IV.
(To Rachel)
By your faithful lips and hands you taught me honor.
You praised God and visited the Mexican orphanages.
We never danced, but you taught me to move,
dreaming on the floor tiles of memories:
one-two-three lift, one-two-three-spin.
You climbed mountains by which others measured
themselves. I like to think there are little footprints
time would politely step over out of respect to you.
Speaking of time, seven years ago to the day you
taught me the permanence of good bye, slow and
thick, yes like honey, even with a bizarre sweetness.
Out of the carcass of the lion something sweet to eat.
V.
(To Rachel)
The picture of you on my desktop obliges me.
You are sweetness itself with your small smile
in a purple blouse and cardigan sweater.
You brought peeled oranges to my desk,
fruits of kindness, for my melancholy.
You knew that morning followed a night of tears
and you knew that those tears were for you,
for the encroaching final goodbye.
I wish I could do something for you,
even a mustard seed’s worth of kindness
something to grow in you that in due time
you could harvest and enjoy the fruit
of my love for you.
VI.
(Voice of Rachel)
Ah, a light salsa in an uptown club.
You men wearing good credit and veneers,
raise your red hot drinks to me.
Come, compliment me on my ass,
I'm happy to tell and show.
Wipe the whip cream from my nose.
Oops some dropped down my blouse.
Oh, what is a princess to do?
Honestly,
I'm innocent as milk.
I lead the women's bible study.
I play with orphans.
I'm a good girl. I deserve a strapping stud.
No, I'm a very good girl. I deserve seven strapping studs,
my heaven with the women bathroom icon over the gate.
So I'm smiling sweetly as the men crowd me and I pretend to care
about the weather and federal reserve interest rates,
and they adore me
love me,
then she
it
comes in.
She paws two of my minions and asks for a dance.
Find your own action, bitch!
And who changed the music to this alt rock crap!
Oh, and God bless
me.
(Voice of Eve)
Take, take, and take!
You fed, gorged on him.
Bled him numb.
The best of him loves you.
I am the worst of him.
I came to roar.
I came to rip.
I came to pulverize
your gingerbread whorehouse.
Yes, yes,
electric guitars
and drums
the dance floor
life charges in
and your men
worship me
like a rock star
raw and spectacular
my thin arms rake air
I kick off
my stilettos
at the sulking girl
with no one
to talk to
about her ass.
VII.
And the path ends with Eve, her silhouette lean and tall, almost stickly.
She waves her hands in a grandiose pattern as though introducing herself
for the first time. The silhouette focuses into a beautiful woman with
a nine-inch nail gripped in her hand, the end of it gleaming in the moonlight.
“Now is time for our sacrament,” she says laying her hand over mine.
With a horrible jolt to my body the nine-inch nail binds our hands in
unholy matrimony as the blood drips to the ground bearing witness.
“You are now bound to me, and I to you.
You will never feel loneliness as I will always
be by your side, my betrothed.”
VIII.
(Voice of Eve)
Life is in the blood.
Let's talk, you and I.
Let's discuss the reason I cannot die.
You may now kiss the bride, my mortal lover.
IX.
Her slender fingers cover my cheek
as her black hair breezes like a night wind.
She gnashes my tongue and we bleed together.
Her bloody kiss softens the bitterness.
X.
(Voice of Eve)
Taste me in your mouth.
Can't you tell?
Your blood drums a march through me.
Long as you live, I, Eve, will live.
No matter how much I hurt you
a part of you will always love me like yourself.
That is the who, the why, the how of me.
XI
(Voice of Eve)
Is it so bad my darkly betrothed?
What other woman has said to you
“Today and forever you are my prize.
I will guard you ferociously”?
Do not mourn the world.
It never loved you as I love you.
It was never bound to you
hand-to-hand by a nine-inch nail.
I will give you a truth.
See what I have seen
over thousands of years:
war, murder, deception,
thievery, adulteries.
The world has forgotten,
has chosen to forsake
its creator, its rightly betrothed.
Just as you are betrothed to me
I will never forget you,
and you will never forget me.
Forgetfulness has lost its place.
I will love you, not as
the world loves,
but in my own devouring way.
As the shadows as my witness.
XII
My dearly, darkly betrothed,
I do not lament the departure
from the dead things of that world,
dead-end jobs, dead-end relationships,
the slow, desperate, starving days
that begged to be filled with anything
to feel full, to feel alive. I tired of feeding
those days with empty energy, unrequited love.
No, Eve.
I am not waiting for the world to fall and burn after
it has finished all its stumbling.
I am not waiting for a renaissance of wonder,
but I cannot ghost your side while
we watch the world bleed to death.
XIII
Eve raises our scarred hands in unison
not only to remind me but to declare
her victory over me. The shadows and
flames applaud her and congratulate
her on her prize. In a twisted way I
am home and with the only woman
who has ever loved me in her own
sick way. Even if I could remove the nail
binding us I could not outrun the scars
of her possession, and what of Rachel?
There is no herculean feat I could do to
earn her love. I am nothing in Rachel’s
world, I am an heirloom in Eve’s.
With my good hand I unpocket a photo
of Rachel, a picture taken at the office
during a company party. Her smile
sparks nothing in me. I hear Eve’s voice:
Let her go. Leave her memory to the flames
And with that I toss her photo to the flames
below and watch it bubble and char away.
From Eve’s back a pair of enormous black wings
unfold over us. I, yes this time I, search for
Eve’s lips and kiss death in all her fullness.