Love triangle with Jerusalem

 

​

You paint dreams         

feelings

quiet despair

in small wordstrokes

I hear insistent hunger

for the desert still gnawing on you

 

You sit across, naked on the couch,

smoking the way men in war do,

this is lovemaking talking this way 

several arm lengths apart,

my breast fills with sweet longing

even my toes wiggle

 

Sensing the shape of this inevitability

you inhale tears through

the Kool’s filter, exhale

only smoke,

there is nothing you can do,

with me you catch fire

 

Even in this foggy city

you are a desert dweller,

believe I live in flames where you

fear you would lose yourself,

and yet, you return,

extinguish your cigarette,

lay down, inhaling me

 

I caress the sharp line

of your jaw as you turn your face

to her, your desert, your Jerusalem, so close 

nothing can lie between you,

you begin painting again

with words on my body

 

 

 

​

© Sharon Lopez Mooney, "Oh, Children of War", originally published in Visible, ed. Stephanie Drenka, featured in Visible Magazine, online, May 26, 2021, Dallas, Texas, https://visiblemagazine.com/chasing-the-trail-of-endings/