Lying there, in sun that’s honey-thick,
I try untangling my fingers from your hair,
trimmed into a soldier’s cut, some mythic
lion mane. You know, you say, I used to wear
a ponytail. You’d grow it back – in a heartbeat,
if you could. I never liked long hair,
but yours would fall like silk, strong and sleek,
like ropes. You ask me softly, do you care
I call you honey? The word hangs midair,
a trembling drip, poised on the comb’s dark edge.
It’s then I know to lay your heart out bare
is every lover’s immanent mistake:
How long she must have lain there, still
and tense in wide-eyed waiting, the rise and fall
of his breath … she held him until
his hands clenched against his dreams, until he called
out, until he pushed her back from him.
His hands outspread, how sunlight must have streamed
through, bright, unyielding. Light swam, blurred and dimmed,
their shadows twined together so it seemed
their bodies had become one. Did she ache,
too, and drop, drained weak, as if it was her own hair shorn,
the strands as strong as ropes; and did it take
her breath, black and scattered on the floor?
I hold my body tense against your warmth
and still, I hear a buzzing, like the bees
who nested in the slain lion’s skin and swarmed
when Samson was betrayed. I feel my knees
turn weak. You see, your hair is already cut –
to keep my strength, I’ll lick some honeyed-skin
and kiss another with my eyes tight-shut
against the beating, unceasing din
of wings. So when you run your fingers through
my hair, as thick and black as that swarm of bees,
and say you love my skin, I hide the truth,
the only thing I know I’ll never say:
That if I really had my way,
I’d cut your hair a thousand times to make you stay.
Amanda Reck is a writer whose work can be found in Measure, Goblin Fruit, Crow & Cross Keys and Locust, among others.
