Tiger Feathers

Into the Ashes

Into the ashes

                               I

                                     sink in clouds of tasteless dreams and

                                     muffled distortions and

                                     static on the blue night singing and

                                     your touch, lingering on my face,

                                     like a feather, like a lie, like the trace of a tear,

                                     like my memory of you, which fades

                                     as I wash my face in the morning.

Into the ashes

                              you

                                      spin your tuneless melody,

                                      sweet harmony of infinity,

                                      dreaming drifting sonata of

                                      faerie dust on your eyelashes as you

                                      blink, blink, and close them forever.

Into the ashes

                             we 

                                    leap off the edge of the waterfall, shouting

                                    through flashes and vignettes and

                                    sand sifting between our fingers and

                                    constellations of lovebites rhyming on itching paper and

                                    laughter shattering on cold gray rocks as you

                                    let go of my hand.

Into the ashes

                              I

                                   climb your staircase of twisting minds and winding words,

                                   interlocked beneath a cosmos of

                                   starlight and yellow traffic lights and

                                   grit under toenails and

                                   your fingerprints on a sliding glass door,

                                   which remain my last reminder of you.

Into the ashes

                              you

                                       fly, free at last from the tumbling waves of life,

                                       the storm tossed sea the wind the heart stain

                                       you failed to leave on my earth, my world, my everything,

                                       just like the failing of your breath, and mine,

                                       intertwined with yours.

Into the ashes

                              we

                                       fall, together, as one, beyond the veiled in backdoor,

                                       beyond the crack in the hourglass, beyond the world

                                       trapped within a cinder box of white lily tears and

                                       scarlet phoenix death, the requiem of fallen autumn leaves,

                                       the swan song of our final days, last hurrah before the

                                       Great Flood lamented through rough throats,

                                       brittle like your body in my arms

                                       as gravity pulls us towards weightlessness.

Into the ashes

                               I

                                   look at you, nestled within the lines of my poem, and smile.