Tipton Poetry Journal
Celestial Cameron Barnett “This time should be mine,” she said, each syllable slicing deep into every day of my raw, splintered life. I knew I had caused the tears on her face; it was me who caused her frame to quiver. “I have forgotten everything I wrote for you,” she uttered⎯ I shuddered. Waking up with good intentions the night restores faith and promise. I visit her again—her glazed visage, her eyes are copper with change. Grazing a finger over her shoulder, she flinches. I retract. “Jesus was born to forgive our sins,” she says. She faces toward the window, glass panes containing her, and I watch her as she watches snow fall on daydreams. I sit at her bedside while she lies, hip high. In her eyes I see ghosts⎯ specters locked away behind her stare. Then, the poison came to kill, and I, just a child following his relevance, bereft of time I may or may not have, could do nothing. She escaped the glass panes that night, leaving behind but a shadow of the hero. But she had taught me that longing does not originate only from the heart but from the eye, the throat, the fist too. The splinters in my life receded into emptiness.
Now I must ravage from spring what feels like fall; I look to the moon and find her smile. [This poem was previously published in The :Lexicon , the literary arts journal of Duquesne University]
68