Waning light pools thickly in the corner:

the color of old sweat,

a sour futile sepia

"What are you thinking?" he asks,

caressing the ends of my hair

as if he could coax words from the deadened bits

In the vicious silence, the words are dry as tale.

A slow frustration has long since settled---

like dust---over the room.

It coasts the tabletop, turns the mirror

into a daguerreotype reality.

Daily I slip under that faded image.

I slip under it daily.

When he speaks to me of the soul,

I do not know what he means.

Is it that heavy thing that forces me

to dredge up drowned thought after thought

from the mud of my mind, dripping

like newly processed photographs?

Is it the mask that sticks to my face like leeches?

Are you still jealous, sisters?

I know the grey landscape you inhabit now,

I have seen the grainy faces of the dead

turn their eye sockets to mine from across the river.

There are things you do not forget.

Words tangle like hair; spill over the pillow.

He is plumbing the waters,

dropping in coins that never sound.

Love, where I am going, you cannot follow.

My lungs are mud-clogged---

I float to where no light reaches.

circa. 1997 athena.

seep.