The Veil, the Blindfold of Thorns

I never saw your face, I saw a smile
A frown, a snarl, side-on as through water
When we did what we did—the leather, the
Melting wax, sighs, gasps, wet slaps, to want slaughter
Of all that makes us, us, so you could be
Hollowed out with pain, become the daughter
Of De Sade, be filled by a rain of pleasure

And I, so I might see haze lessen
I might see a face—alive, ecstatic

I did not

I might see your face on a card, gas-lit
In a suburban home long-ago as
A hand, dark with cocoa, pulls cards to fit
A complex pattern of medieval art
And by chance, you are pulled, that hennaed hand
With long, broken nails makes a psychic hit

The place long prepared for you is there now

Rose red
Glacier blue
Obsidian Black
Are colors for you

They deteriorate of course, into
Colors that look like burned cooking oil on a
Stream of piss under an old street light.
Do It! Do it now! Show me the face I yearn
To scratch, to caress, to make me love you
Let me discover lips in all ways

But your card, 'The Veil, the Blindfold of Thorns'
And I see nothing beyond the bright veil

I always see it, but in dreams the lace
Of the Veil, a white like the core of a
Dying sun overwhelms me, and to replace
That longing other women become my
Goal. In them I see fragments of the face
All women become gifts to me from you

Remove the veil, show me your face I beg
A featureless pure white, Venusian light
Too bright for the eyes, harsh, broken

Take that strange cloth
Reach it around my head
Pull tight the blindfold of thorns

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Depression

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My story "Connect" was published last year in the anthology "Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever," edited by the formidable Phoenix Sullivan. On Tuesday, January 31, you can download the entire anthology Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever free from the Kindle store. On both Tuesday and Wednesday, you can download each of the 18 single stories for free, including my story, Connect . By any reasonable measure we are dead. Unity -- slow, cold and broken -- is leaving me behind. It’s a slowly boiling mass of speckled gray now. I’m walking away from it, building, understanding, memorizing as I go. And to do these things, to tie them together, I use my memories. Of being alive, of dying, of being dead. Other authors in the anthology are participating in this promotion: Chrystalla Thoma: "The Angel Genome" Peter Dudley: "Distractions" Shona Snowden: "Blood Fruit" Scott Thomas Smith: "In Ring" Jo Antareau: "My Own

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