O, but the precious pinprick
Of your fingernails on the bulging bones of my hip.
Reminds me of being 17 and chasing Clarissa through the fields

When out in the meadows, we went on singing
- I am not naturally evil!
Such things I do
Just to make myself more attractive to you.
Have I failed? –
And Clarissa stripped of her bows,
Down it hung:
Limp, serpentine, clinging to her virginal shoulders.

Now she hisses don’t mention don’t mention don’t mention
While she hears the snickering inside her mind – should she
Open her lips and let it escape?
Like with pharaohs, they travel up the nose and scour for thought
And discard the sinewy flesh that
Once was young.

But it was a mis-catch:
The voices they bound in with her stitched lips now swirl out
And seize a terrible revenge.

They weep for the hands that once clutched ripe mangoes
And plunged in white teeth with a satisfying squelch.
They weep for nimble digits that scrawled their name
Upon the chest of a bright boy with leukemic eyes and the hands of a priest.

Older now, but our cast iron songs and torch ballads
Will be thrown to the wind that carried Clarissa away.