THE OTHER SIDE OF NOON
The hours of midday grow too tight to breathe
together we take the afternoon off like a corset
of whalebone duties and cotton soft small talk.
It is your idea to flay the slowly dying daylight
in private by handling desire like a sharp object.
Tear that glare asunder until we touch its fuse.
Or is radiance flaying us with tingling urgency?
Each beam a thorn in our lonely task of living
forcing surrender to the paradox within dreams.
You paraphrase that silence we know by heart
promise a small death but by Saint Bartholomew
now we need a new skin large enough for two.
We keenly stitch away with the tips of our tongues
sew nakedness to nakedness to make a fitting hide
using twenty-one fingers like embroidering needles
until we feel the pulse of the bright red evening sun
as it sets behind the eyeballs of our imagination.
Only then is it dark enough to rest in our shadows.
The hours of midday grow too tight to breathe
together we take the afternoon off like a corset
of whalebone duties and cotton soft small talk.
It is your idea to flay the slowly dying daylight
in private by handling desire like a sharp object.
Tear that glare asunder until we touch its fuse.
Or is radiance flaying us with tingling urgency?
Each beam a thorn in our lonely task of living
forcing surrender to the paradox within dreams.
You paraphrase that silence we know by heart
promise a small death but by Saint Bartholomew
now we need a new skin large enough for two.
We keenly stitch away with the tips of our tongues
sew nakedness to nakedness to make a fitting hide
using twenty-one fingers like embroidering needles
until we feel the pulse of the bright red evening sun
as it sets behind the eyeballs of our imagination.
Only then is it dark enough to rest in our shadows.
Valeria Melchioretto