I felt it first in Idaho
Where the sky seems closer to the ground,
The sun is antiseptic
And the light is as astrigent as the sound of the wind and
the smell of
sage,
Remember
I wanted to hook my arm in yours
and lean against your warmth
Close enough to hear your breath
nip at your neck, and flash smiles at you
until you shivered,
....watch the sun slant golden
in your eyes.
I wanted to hear the Western wind
singing to a part of me
that you had awakened from the silence and the cold
but
I suppose shame was an angel,
carried in the holsters of
the ghosts of this western town,
with narrow streets
and
hitching
posts where wild horses won't be tethered
or fed...
and wolves seldom wander without
getting bullets
lodged
in their heads,
You disentangled your fingers
from mine,
and the canopy of sky
was not for touching
or bathing you
in dessert air
The hungry lurked to
roast my heart beneath it
so my will went weak
in the parchment, crackling air
I was a woman tumbling
into a far away night mare
like flesh falling from bones
we separated there and you never knew it
while I calculated the cost of airfare
to run from this sun, my shame
the truth that I would never wear your name.
I was this wild horse no one tethered or fed,
I was to be the wolf with the bullet
in her head.
I am this faithful heart
left for dead, and I know it
and sit
alone in front of the drugstore
while you go in to talk to an old friend
who should see her,
not me, there with you
