Some roads lead nowhere;
They’re my favorites.
I held my breath while
You drew my face in
Blinding strokes and
Creamed my mouth with curling lines
Destroyed one picture; then another.
Left at dawn while I
Ran downstairs in circles, calling
Raging, spending
Nights without you,
No blue thigh guards
My sleeping heart while yours looks out
To gauge the coming storm.
Now I’m trapped in cloverleaves
Sentenced to school figures
By endless angry judges.
Every face I paint is yours; balked by
The enervating past
Of unlived lives.
Open up the chilly ruffles
Of my breasts
To beauty; yours and mine and your
Strange spine’s;
A body so much lighter
Than the mountain that you loved
The course you learned
Much better than you learned me.
Overconfident that
you’ll come back
I float across the powdered snow;
In bird-winged silence
all-enveloping
Lost and frozen like my heart?
Alysse Aallyn 