Darkness by Theresa Gaynord

Darkness by Theresa Gaynord



Pale lips part, titillating the words,

trumped by those assassin eyes that

form the terms of squelched passions,

pursuit facilitated not by a slick,

scrimshaw knife, but by the hands that

once caressed her body with shameful

indulgences.



He cups her neck, tightening the grip,

forgetting how to forgive the abortion

she’s just had; pain exorcises the demons

of regret, like a song that weeps for the

past, happy it’s remained there. His face is

chiseled ice, the wounds of his soul,

beyond the scope of understanding.



One vacant smile, mute to the invitation

it contains, mute, to his spotlight of misery.

He leaves her once embrace in the raw

mechanics of the act, abstract to the concept

of time. His self-proposal is this: to not waste

any more time, to reestablish the vigor of

his drive within the sanity of proceeding,



to feel, the subliminal and unspoken ease

of pleasant diversion. He writes stories

in a chorus of pleasure and longing. He

retracts the gesture of his sin already

committed with personal and fragile depth,

through a stack of other women, most,

already spoken for.



He thinks he has fooled everyone, and that

the realism within his world of fantasy, has

purpose. He dances with trees part time, hacking

bark just to watch them fall, and his grunts

echo in the wind as mighty maples drop their

leaves on the road among broken trunks and

branches. He notes the angles of their collapse,



the graceless limbs as they begin to fail. His touch

is treason and comes disguised within the wake

of houses waiting to be built and award winning

books, written in an attempt to wipe out identity. He

says he’s changed, that he’s not the man he used to be,

but I’m not easily seduced by words. I know he watches

his eyes in the mirror and adjusts his heart, to their



darkness.