At Dawn She Comes: The Morning After Red Light

The Morning After Red Light

It’s a slow day
Watching the winding down of fan blades
Ignoring the broken lamp shade and the scarlet sash betrayed
Lying where her clothes had fell the night before

In the next room
In her rocking chair she knits
Trying to tune out the bits of the reports from the radio
While he lies naked in a quilt upon the floor

And the radio
Pours out the latest body count
Filling high the glass of doubt from which he drinks to still his mind
Running from the exponential ebb of time

Daydreaming of her
Framed in the foreplay of the night
Standing in the tinted light, she was the goddess of his storm
Casting cherry silhouettes of naked form

And then her skin so smooth and warm
And the sheetrock thunder mourned
The broken promise to only be friends
With poison dreams of high hope
Unweaving the holy tightrope
He gambles heaven for an earthly dance

But then it comes back
The chalkboard nails along the back
The knives of tongue carelessly flung, pinning the truth upon the wall
Like a poster for a film he never saw

Now he looks at her
Naked knitting in her seat
The monocular shot glass of grief distorts the face he sees
Into a stranger who might take him at his knees

And then the promises of carousels
And revolutionary wedding bells
Is dealt out once again steady and sure
Confident as a conned black belt
That nothing he says will be smelt
He gambles heaven for an earthly cure

But she looks at him
And naked is his mystery
Wrapped tightly in her patchwork history of old defeats
And she cuts a smile at all the unraveling seams

And then the radio
Declares the ending of the war
Unsure who to reward while rivals lounge in the sun room
Watching the falling petals from the withered bloom
Watching the falling petals from the withered bloom
Watching the falling petals from the withered bloom