le balcon
adapted from the original French by Charles Baudelaire
touchstone of time, master of memory
the key to all that I might pray or be
do you remember my purr under your hand?
do you recall how my body felt in that room?
you touched the stone of my time, a memory
you always called to me in the evenings,
the rose colored glasses I wore every time
counting my breaths by eight, back straight
you told me things I would never forget,
showed me a side of myself I can never unsee.
under your gaze I would sun myself to blistering,
your universe glimpsed through my tunnel vision lens
my tendrils unfurled and reaching up to touch you
your condescending care like cologne
mixed with the softest salt of a full day’s work
I always left in shadows, last car in the lot
and only in the highway lights home
did my knees begin to throb from kneeling,
did I taste the blood on my tongue from biting,
the shadows cutting through your fluorescent influence.
I call up these memories, my own de Sade,
approaching the past like an altar
and it is only here that I can offer myself,
because if I saw god in your face again,
I would abdicate my kingdom to your rule once more
those gazes like touch, ownership burned like love
I wanted you and she still lives inside me,
growing and fading, the moon and all her tides
I know I will always be cleansed in her waves
if I didn’t drown in the tide pools with you.
Monica Deck is an author, archer, and generally awkward person. She lives with two of her fellow humans and four cats in the US midwest.
