by Dawn Sands
The figure
spun by shadows
suspended in time
encroaches on your door.
Your husband’s blood
entertains his playful hands.
The veil of the past and of the future
falls about your face,
and the noise of the country’s mourning
infiltrates the silence of your own:
descending scales of the harshest bells
resound throughout the city
and as the figure advances
the church clock chimes the half hour.
The faint white line around your left fourth
finger
must be redressed.
The shadow draws nearer
crooked smile crooked gait crooked heart
locked hideously, irrevocably
in tandem with yours.
Your averted eyes spark
with electric tears
that must not flow,
for you must stand defiant—
yet you cannot hide from the man
who sees through everything,
whose mind is like
clockwork;
who can draw a breath
and within an hour summon the sunlight
that turns the veil from black to white.
You must not be
his wanton ambling nymph.
You will hurl at him
that lightning electricity
scald him with your words
and yet
in the town, those harsh church bells
modulate
into a major key.
He will lend you none of his false tears
only pitiless piousness
and nimble seductiveness,
a furnace hot enough to melt
a heart of stone.
And as he bears you away
down the rose-lined sordid track to hell
the toll of the hour of your reckoning
grows ever louder.
The veil falls from your face
and disappears into smoke,
elusive, grey.
The clock stops ticking
the bells start chiming
and the shadow
slinks crookedly
away.
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