in retrospect we were living art,
i threw my head back and laughed
while the breezes would comb their fingers through my curls,
and your eyes would light up when my secrets wobbled
between my mouth and your memories.
in an ideal shade of rose we filtered all the light to match correspondingly,
ignoring the impossible depth of the thorn in your side because,
if you can’t get it out don’t let it out.
bite bottom lip and brace for breakage because by this time tomorrow you will be
buried.
i dug you a garden plot hidden behind the vines of jasmine;
in case you fester too loudly i want to be able to turn the volume up on fragrant frames of mind and picture a prettier plot,
i am a well of power bubbling up from womanly wombs and shapely thighs, speaking in nuances of the hindrances i have imposed here now and today;
ladylike and kindly has done me no good and what a waste to turn down the pounding undertones of piety for the sake of saving faces.
in my good graces there are shadows to keep safe in,
hanging hammocks netted with forgetful forgiveness to weave your fingers through;
pondering paths in the safety of patience here
is ideally how you move from milestone to milestone,
i am moving memorials to the back of the file
because nostalgia is only as good as it is pliable,
summoned and adjusted like sly serpents moving musically through memory
but let’s be adults here, nostalgia is no good at all.
i am a continent landlocked here by rivers of lavish and loose nuance,
i speak to you in whispers on megaphones to balance out the tilt of the earth,
we were only up to the third degree and we’ve got twenty more.
i have tried to keep a balance of the beautiful and the bared,
but the honest truth is hidden in the confessions of the bashful.
i am unforgiven and unapologetic, graceful and garish in the hopes that
white noise camouflages the grey area shaded
between the borders of honesty.
but honestly speaking, i am a continent landlocked by rivers of watery nuance,
and if you are to stay an ocean bearing the weight of windswept sea-crets,
know this:
i am a freshwater well of light reflecting pigments,
like babbling brooks on summer afternoons
singing joyfully to sunstroked clouds and i,
i have no use for sandy shores with salt to bury in my scrapes today and i,
i have no use for ephemeral footprints tracking mud through my memories and i,
i am a continent today, molten and tectonic from the ground up.
i am a continent today, solid ground beneath the feet of lovers and poets,
declaring independence and wordplay as law of the land here and now
we will be heroes and artists in our solid stances and stanzas;
because i am a continent today,
and my boundaries have buried you on foreign soil.
Garbanzo Bae 