BECAUSE THE HEART
You've come because I asked you to.
You've come because the heart
Is always unfinished.
What will you say to them, who ask?
That there was a woman who took your hand
And led you down a spiral staircase
Composed of words, lipstick and whispers,
A blonde woman with tinsel in her hair,
And how she loved roses and Jesus.
You once bought her roses
From a street vendor
At three in the morning.
And then she asked you to come
Into those rooms you'd only imagined.
She laughed with you,
Showed you photographs of her family,
Offered you fruit and wine.
She held your hand
And told you secrets.
And you came because she asked you to,
Because the heart is always unfinished.
In her room there were Autumn leaves,
Pressed and strung, still blood red.
There was a portrait of a nun
With one thorn emerging from the white
Of her habit.
And the bed on the floor
Where you wrestled for hours.
She held your face in her hands.
She let you touch her,
Feel the textures of her skin.
She recited Baudelaire
As you kissed her thighs.
And you came because she asked you to.
Because your conversations
Were full of hunger and absence.
Because the heart
Is always unfinished.
What will you say to them, who ask?
That you loved this woman, full
Of superstition and doubt?
That in your arms
She was wet
With the dew of Eden?
Sunday mornings after you left
The impression of your body on the bed
Remained, the smell of you caught
In my hair, on my linen dress.
Your kisses still moist on my throat
And between my breasts.
And you came because I asked you to.
Because words were not enough.
Because the heart
Is always unfinished.