Paradox of a Drowned River-Flower

~ a dark love poem ~

Copperplate etching by author ‘Seascape’

You said

in voice infirm,

sight ravished by too

many suns and

glimpsed chimeras,

nothing is forever.

I walked a chained walk

on a scorched immaculacy,

shattered splashes of

yesterday’s innocence.

And I was left with

a sharded sun

black flowers and

severed arms of a dead wind.

With the patience of a sphinx

I waited.

Ate only husks.

lived on errant breaths.

But all those abstentions?

to no avail.

A vanished you

wears me like a shadow.

I want you to

dip me again in

shimmered hope

anoint my cheek with stars

you promised,

together we…

You promised. But that was then.

Let us

you and I

even if in a dream,

together crucify despair,

make of it

a banished daemon

let needles of rain

impale and desecrate

what’s left of ourselves

so that it can bloom,

the death-posy

which awaits us

like unholy voodoo

of a forbidden eden.

And like the paradox

of a drowned river-flower,

we learn to be safe

in the embrace of a blunted blade.

Farida Haque