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Timewave Zero

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An Affair With Time

by Rebecca Lu Kiernan


He is a three-legged
Hit-and-Run victim
Staggering dazed
Down a cobblestone street,
Wolf without a collar.
Thorax crushed, his howl
Is an unbearable airy whistle.
One cobalt eye
Dangles loose from its socket.

The accident
Has not harmed his mind.
He summons her cognac hair
Sweeping against his face
In every indelible embrace.
He recalls her address and phone,
The quick way she undresses
When she thinks she is alone
As opposed to her slow theatrical tease.

He eats garbage and the irony of roadkill,
Lives in a moldy cardboard box
Beneath the bridge.
His heart is seven years of anesthesia.

Some nights
The moon winks like suicide.
He creeps in clumsy silence
To the window of her dreams.
She sleeps in a perfect tangle with her lover.

He turns his broken face away,
Struggles to catch his breath,
Imagining he will recover,
Scratch at her door in the light of day.

Wolf without a collar,
Guest in her kaleidoscopic house.
She will love him just like new.
He will trust her
Not to Hit-and-Run him

As she will Always do.


Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Lu Kiernan

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