To Lucy

I wish I could still hold you
like I did they night they tore thr place up,
when glass was flashing down around us,
and you hid your fear in my shoulder,
and I pulled you into me
as though I could shuffle oour ribs like cards,
and fold our hearts like two supplicating palms,
like a prayer.

I would hold you so tightly
that my guilt, and your cocaine,
and no man

especially not that one,
whom we both thought we loved
could ever slip between us
and pry your thin bruised body from me,
deprive me of my dark, chosen twin.

If I were a man,
I would hold you better,
you would love me like you don't.
But I am a girl even in my dream,
where I am flying over the dark lawn
to the little room we shared,
and it smells like sweet olive
and gardenia and the slow river.
I hover with my hands on the window,
and you are there, but I am shut out,
fluttering against the panes
like a moth to your light.

Kelly Cox