I am strung out on a prayer for love;
My hopes still tart and swollen with the ghost
Of the pink lemonade I had during the crest of summer
Under the warm glow of a streetlight, my pale hand around
The thin tight shape of a glass stolen from our local diner
Long dark locks I don’t bother to trim fall over my shoulder,
Free in the wind, damp with rain,
And you watch the way I move with the same attention
Some people provide to ballet dancers, those lithe lovers of
Gentle form and poignant wit, their pale pointed shoes
Tender across the stage, which is the same way you look at me
Layers of sugar plum balm rest easy on my lips,
Applied with a glancing hand, which later takes yours,
Later still it falls across my poetry with the same grace
Possessed by a genuine smile, its curve across a lover’s face,
With a lopsided ache for a return; staircases are surmounted
In long full ballgowns while the orchestra chimes away below,
You know they could fly in the greatest composers of the modern era
And I still might choose to sit with you on the balcony,
Our legs swinging above the city, one of my red heels falling from
Its attachment and into the enchanting roses that lie below;
You swear to retrieve my shoe when the dawn brings its eternal offering,
Then clink your stolen champagne glass against mine, because
When you are young wisdom is trivial, you think you know all there is,
That the extent of splendour is contained in the stroke of a painting,
An artful phrase in a novel, in the sea as it meets the shore—which seems
To you a perennial endearment, the warm reassurance of a life well-lived—
When you are young there isn’t a church in the world more sacred
Than the sound of your lover’s laugh,
and if you’re lucky there never will be.
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