Love Letter

Beautiful girl;
Don’t let me see your fathers die under crumbling piles of stone.
Windpipes caved in beneath weight of legend they can tell no more.
Don’t let me see your garden turn to dust when you water it with too much grief.
Please turn you lips from the kiss of poison toads that catch you by the edge of stagnant ponds
As you lie in wait for swords that fail to surface.
Don’t let me see lovers prepared from thorns cut your thighs
Inside moonless nights.
Dark stains on white sheets.
Keep the washer women’s whispers from my ears as they wring your
Darkness into murky basins.
Beautiful girl.
I traced you to the back of my hand so that I might watch you fade in ink,
Over and over.
Don’t let me see the bottle run dry before I can remake your outline, I would Scratch you out in
Blood and bone
So that I could hold you in a bell-jar.
Vacuous prison to keep you from decay.
Don’t give me cause to jump into your grave and run my fingers over your
Eaten skin.
Once clean with days of rippled glass reflections. Libraries full of sunlight where you would watch the dust rise in luminous shafts off aching tomes.
Beautiful girl,
Blind my eyes before the altar of your descent.
Put them out with burning rods before I feel the shame of tragic leads.
Put them out,
Beautiful girl,
Before I see what I have done.