I am Juliet

laid out

beneath my lust for God

and Romeo

my lover

of holy words

and holy actions

feeling me

up

and down

through this crowd

of crowded parapets.

I am something new,

something different,

something unseen to most people,

to,

uniquely exotic to be recognized past my long hair

and brown eyes

sinking

like great ships

on great oceans

made of metal

and myself

the dry line

that wavers under its eye.

I am Juliet

loving

the lover at my heels

holding me close in my sense of death.

My sense of rebirth

so soonly made

to resemble

a child

whispering to the shadows of the night.

I am to soon worn

to soon completed

here

tonight

as I am Juliet

under this love.

I am contented to stay here

in my silence

dead

with waiting

and wandering.

I am satisfied

with his kiss

ever sweetly placed on my lips.

I am

in need of nothing more.

I am Juliet

the beautiful one

folding my hands

in prayer and contemplation

at my sunken eyes

and sealed lips

bejeweled with the fiery longing to spill myself out on his kitchen floor

and reveal

all that I hide from him on this night.

My temper

changes the temperature of his love

and I lash out again.

Why?

What's wrong with Romeo

twisting my fingers

toward the way home

and me

afraid to face down those walls

and those demons.

How?

How could I not realize

the nature of my ways

the evil in my doings

the tainted lips

rose-red

between my words

staring me down for the first time tonight.

I am Juliet

alone

in my conquest

for freedom from all that would ban me

into this coincidental existence

of falling behind

and always looking for something

that I will never find.

Stop!

I can't open my judgment to these tears

falling

from eyes that still seek to look on you

and hold you

as though I were a child

lost without the arms that save me from the nightmares

that I dream every July.

I want to be exquisite

angelic white

in your line of vision,

to run you down

with all of the things that you don't see past my surface

all of the love

twining from my hands

through lust

and language

that rule my life like the constellations

to scientists,

and the sea

to fishermen.

Make me an angel tonight

make me breath in the sweetness of your forgiveness

and the beautiful tiptoe of my silence.

My lack

of left emotions

on the right track tonight.

I am Juliet

living in my own death,

living in the prayer of tomorrow,

living on the ship that sunk long ago

but still I cling to it,

but

tomorrow

if not tonight

I can escape,

rise

into my own arms

and live again.

I am Juliet.