Diaphane

Oh woman! the beauty of your diaphanous figure standing at the precipice– as if a sprite, hesitating between the earth and the sky and my arms–

how could your small fragile hands hold on so hard to my shoulders and yet i could barely feel them we grip firmly first to the things we need and then to those we love

your grip made enough violence for the world but now I see you flailing– a crimson leaf blowing in the wind dangerously close to the dirt– suddenly grounded & dispersed– like the sea rubbing off the lovers’ final footsteps in the sand.

I imagine all of us thirstily sitting alone in an arid desert– leaves falling like daggers coated in water and blood as we try to catch them.

In their fall I see reflections of your face - shaking - and other sprawling paths that haunt me with the pressure of possibilities each will bear down on my soul with inane force every day till I die.

But the leaves fall in passing every day in this place and I too shall pass beyond these dunes until that great thirst finds its place in mud, water or blood.