Love in Roman Ruins
--
The tourists are gone,
we left them behind
as cobbles gave way
to peripheral wilds
Bagpipe cicadas,
heat as a stillness
Tall yellow grass
that won’t say a word
Little red bricks
hide in the brambles,
Obsessive green ivies
fuse to dry clay
the grittiness pleases
fumbling fingers
that spider-brush past
seeking purchase and torque
The chamber is roofless –
shrubs hold a cloud –
Pine needles soften
the barbs in our thighs
Your viscous bloom
enamours my hand
Your pressing palms
give my back heft
Loosened black ringlets
sway on your brow
traversing your ice floes
of incendiary blue
We catch a glimpse
of veins and a tightness
Pompeian purple
over cream white and pink
As every wet ridge
slides past every lip
triggers of good
crash through the chimes
Fever breath
tongue tips held back
vanilla and smoke
the hardness of cheekbones
There is a moment
when I’m part of your spine
and you are the blood
heating us both
A muscle alliance
galloping blind,
tensing and starving
for sweetness and salt
We’re being watched
by curious immanence
The huntress who smirks,
The hooves that I hear
The bricks of the chamber
twang back our sounds
The maw in the chest
tumble-swoops open
A surf of deep honey
sucks back a beach,
of shingle-click kindness,
inordinate luck
Your taut belly trembles
villagers run
torrents are torrid
yours swallow mine
And just as it started
it ends, with a rush
with liminal faeries
swimming our eyes
Chirruping sweat
collects on our skin
the breeze of our breathing
faint, like a song
Here in the shade
of perpetual decay,
butterfly laughter,
ridiculous joy
Then beasties resume
their twitches and crawls,
and maculate sunlight
anoints an embrace
Rain echoes the stairwell,
a year later, in Rome
You speak from your door,
the elevator hangs open
But I let your words fall
from blue ice, to hurt,
to the smoothness of tiles
and the drone of hydraulics
Two dozen moons
have since silvered my blood,
as I step among ferns
at the end of the earth
The gifts I now bring you
are ruined, are ruins
But back in the brambles
our ruins still stand
