Author, Poet, Photographer
On the same day as a car
Carrying man, wife and three children
Crossed the central reservation,
Your fingers,
fragile as a butterfly
Compelled my flesh to life
Moving us beyond specific endings;
While somewhere else, an unsuspecting wife,
Returned to find her husband hanged
Within the confines of a room
Where long ago, they had conceived a dream.
On the day, that you and I
Forgetful from each others’ kiss
Let passion fuse our separate flesh,
Dispelling past and futures with each breath,
Five men inside an armoured car,
Who may have loved before,
Or, lived to taste oblivion again,
Were carefully partitioned by a bomb.
When we, as lovers, lay together,
Learning from each tender touch
The contours of desire,
A young boy, barbed by broken vows
Blew out his mind.
Bequeathing unto death
The final affirmation of despair.
As our linked bodies lived
The mutual length of ecstasy,
Excluding expectation and recall,
A sterile room, its starkness
Softened by cut flowers,
Was witness
To a mother’s leaving kiss.
On the same day as my living seed
Erupted in your womb, to shrink
Perception of our universe to one
Sensation greater than this tiny room,
Many minds discovered space too large;
And found such moments as we shared,
Too rare a compensation for their loss.
© James Rainsford