She

Christopher Gorrie

Was an aperitif to an aphorism,
An architect of aphrodisia,
An apiary of my ever-buzzing thought.

She slipped into me streamline: maraschinos
Into a Manhattan. Oh strike of sugar,
Stain the bitterest days a red no chemical dispels.

She was a cryptic gallipot
Shelved in an apothecary
At the Caelian’s base.

Her shape was incense wisps, her touch
A song sung in 1940s noir, her locking gaze
Eros himself.

Alliteration ran thick through the blood.
The paintings? Like Debussy composed.
Nothing in the universe could’ve imposed

Anything on her!—Quit it, you idiot…
The admiration, the visions that adorn her:
Subjectively supernatural—

Maybe she’s just a girl, the way that you’re a boy—
No air of denigration.
She was intricate, but altogether simple.

I encountered her in stifled confessions.

It was not the beauty of her face, the body
That held her mind and laughter, not the dazed sting
In my hand as it cupped in hers—

It was her autotelism and her hope.

And now her imaginings hang,
Framed in my house; little landscapes of the heart she left;
Retreats that prove I’ve loved and been loved.