Alegria Imperial: “Love-Lettered”


Another week slips into
the inevitable: the end of
a string of days. What is to
unravel or recall determines the
weight of this week’s end.
To your first week end
evening, dusk I hope
descended grace on its brow
instead of thorns on its
fingers as it props you up
struggling to haul your fatigue
onto a train.

Where is your stop, Caro?
Is if to the waiting
‘muneca’? Her seas tonight
I hope had ceased roiling and
holds a quiet bed of words
she wreaths you with, scented
lily-calm or cherry silken-ed
What awaits you bounding
on Madrid streets, love
in your instep to
her door I hope not sour drops
littered behind the door-click, mouth-
hurting pebbles that her thoughts
had become when thinking of
you ‘living your life as your life’
not ‘life with her as your life’.

Loving and un-loving
that have for fifteen moons
tossed and battered you–
even if at times washed you
kissed and brilliant in suns,
interminable moving suns, that
dip and set then rise
ir-recognizable even to you who
has a sun for a heart—I wish
soon ends this ‘fin de semaine’. A
new moon rising unseen as yet
I wish grips the seesaw lever
and balancing you on pole-ends
pulls you upright from the
ribs, coaxes a deep breath,
gifts you a glass-clear sense
not so much to know what’s right
but what you want from loving
or un-loving.

The fruit not the tree, you say,
Caro, seems to rot in your hands when it
finally falls. I say, it does, if your
desire ends in your hands—in it
a fruit unmasked shows hairs, dimples
or scars. Its essence is in its fruit—ness
not in that weight on your hands. A
woman like a fruit has her essence
hidden. More than a fruit, a woman
rots not. To want to hold her it is her
spirit you must bridle and if you could
you must sip and swallow or if not,
sip and spew. One other
secret: you have to let her imbibe
your spirit as you do hers. If to this
you demure, then turn away
for ends of weeks may not
turn around and loving will
remain un-loving.

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