The Empress of Ice-Cream

I dated someone once, who smoked cigars,

He and his friends. They were constantly setting the upstairs ablaze

Until none but them dare come near it

Shame, now they are lonely and I no longer

Have to smell like the death of my grandparents

It is a sad thing perhaps, but as a child I enjoyed funerals

I loved to sit in the silent dim, smell the rustling

Overabundance of flowers, feel the magnetism of far-away

Families toward no-where, Louisiana, and each other

Some credit is owed my brothers who played with me

Quietly and patiently, “I Spy” anything other than the great yawning box

And my mother’s tears. Is it possible that life can be so much like death?

That when I die they will shade my “mortal coil” in sheets so like

The ones under which here we lay together? That at that moment

(Or so I am told) when I rest my eyes I will know

True existence, such as that I truly feel alive

Only when I’m with you? Beauty also in its rawest nakedness

Shall I feel, beautiful?

Like I never felt before until I met you. As I slip beneath this burden of life, I grow cold,

Which hardly should alarm you any more than my ice-cube toes, snuggled up to you

In the small hours of the morning. My silence I am sure will not perturb you any more than the usual

Way that my answers to your questions are swallowed up into the night. But

One thing I know: There will be no bright light for me at my last –

Only your face and the light of the street lamp

As it falls through the blinds into your bedroom.