Unfolding

Poem by Lisa Smith

He stares at me
Deep down into the messy parts of me
Into the shadowed crooked parts of me
His eyes trace me, and I follow them
And we uncover the lying parts of me
And so, it begins
It’s the unfolding
The unfolding of me
I stare at you
Straight into the lonely holy parts of you
Loud but still parts of you
Right into the beautifully jagged
Shadowy parts of you
I uncover the dying parts of you
I trace you with my eyes, and you follow
And so it begins
It’s the unfolding
The unfolding of you
And so it began
By accident
On purpose
Unapologetically tragic
It began
In the silent spaces
In the crease of your face
In the places where choirs sing offbeat
With the hum of a lone firefly
It began
In the chaos of the lines on your face
And with a soft trembling
It began
And with a quiet scream
It died
Not liking what we saw.
Never meant to be seen.
Unapologetically tragic was
The unfolding of you
The unfolding of me
Untitled
The trees glistened, and their leaves hung overhead
Covered in gold, saffron, and sapphire threads
They kissed the tops of our heads
Fiercely but gently
Left its fragrance
Left its stain
And a thin layer of purple skin
We were drunk
Innocently draped us like fine linen.
Covered us like dew and baby’s breath, the first one, the soft one
Happiness chased us, and we forfeited
With it, she brought beauty
We beheld her until she melted
Until she belonged to us
Until she smelled like us
Until she looked like us
Until she instead longed for us
But then
But then we sat up high.
And looked down low and saw.
See them looking up at us.
Wanting it to be their turn
Everything waited for its turn.
And when we fell
When we fell
We learned that
The trees glistened and hung overhead.
Only to seduce us
We were drunk
We fell
I feel knowing that the rustling of the leaves
Only moved crept to put us to sleep
A rippling, choppy, laughing lullaby
A silent wailing
We fell
Fell knowing that the fine linen bore holes
We were never clothed
Never covered
Naked thoughts on bleeding minds and collapsed hearts
We were wearing garments woven with fool’s gold
Bitter saffron and Scarlett threads
A dull knife was given to us
Stained in red, white, and blue
We used it to carve holes in our memory
And yet we drowned in them
We jumped, and on the way down, we saw that
Wisdom and Beauty came only to bewitch us