The Doe-Eyed Girl With Late August Skin

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Time is the quotidian commute of the sun  
The months long striptease of the moon
The hammock sway of indecision
The memorandum of embers
that refuse to die.
Time is the only thing that we can’t get enough of
when we’re in love
and it’s the one thing that we cannot bear
when our beds are haunted 
and we’ve calculated 
the number of sparrows
flying across the 
vinyl coated landscape 
of quiet wallpaper.

Time 
as we age 
becomes the conservator
of our desecrated hearts
whose still life memories 
in the hummingbird second
of say, a Sinatra song
can exhume our grief
or resurrect a moment of lust
like the summer of 1970
when
the doe-eyed girl with
late August skin
answered the door
wearing nothing but a powder blue
barely snapped work shirt
and a nonchalant towel turban
and smiled 
like a daylily in the sun
which sent me reeling backwards 
like Capa’s fallen soldier
riddled with love
whose mortal wounds I still feel
to this day.



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