by Anna R. Hall

Her bones are haunted, she tells me,
  by him, by the smell of jasmine -- ?
  twisted into her skin like summer,
wrapped around the stems
          of bridal bouquets:
  prepared -- waiting -- caught.
    But she is unacknowledged.

And, talking, she throws wide the drapes of time,
          circumstance -
        drawn up - without breaking:
            a stride, a fingernail, a dream.

I admire her. We walk slowly in grass, wet green to our ankles;
  we don't notice
              the stains.

        I coil into her composure, smoothing my own space under it,
    maintain my pace across gravel, asphalt, into leather and steel,
behind a wheel that turns under my palm into wheels, within wheels:
      some hypnotizing, narcotic action I swallow

        whole, to keep from waking up. Sleep into, shut eyes under,
drink darkness blissful out of like nectar, like a magic:

sometimes blindness is a blessing.

Or so she tells me, and I believe her. We meet friends for coffee
and I am introduced - the lonely. No one minds me, points me out.

      I am awkward around words; in the world,
        I am a man without grace.

But behind scenes, in safety, I prophesy, I conjure, I swear, I see --
    I am king of my own country.

I carry only this cousin to grief: cold feet, and Switzerland,
    or myself, neutral to fire.

[Anna R. Hall is an Austin-based research analyst/freelance writer. She writes poetry primarily to amuse her cat. Her work has been published in several journals and was awarded UKC's 1996 T.S. Eliot prize for poetry.]