ash & water

by Scherezade Siobhan

tilt your head back. un-knot the sparrows caught in the courtyard of your throat. compose the trestle that nestles your nape. rest your neck in the pillow of my palms. balm its buzz; the waythe world ruminates inside your head - a german bee searching for pollen in the jaws of a full bloom water-lily.  blindfold a gauze of mexican lace over the window of your gaze. come faithful. come lost. a small dog that dreams of never-ending light. a child deposited at a church’s confession box. soften the taut spire of your torso. let your limbs be a loose language. stutter a shape. bring your coal-dust filth. the silt lining the silica of your strands. bring the fires you tasted tonight. there is nothing ordinary about wonder. become a word my mouth can bend at will. let my fingers twirl the dark licorice of your day. sugar the pause of each fingerprint. leave a little of your flint to spark a search party. you will not be found. your head - a hurricane drawn with black crayon. to massage the dome of bone. sinew sold to chirapsia. your shadow glows as a wick’s tallow drowning in a lamp full of linseed oil. i rake kohl from the purple slur of the eclipse. the room opens itself as a vespertine’s lilac umbrella. the liquid linger of saw palmetto and nettle essence. an almost absinthian glow of aloe. thumbs kneading the blooddrunk cartilage. an earlobe with the curvature of a halved gypsy mushroom. to clean its cove of the collected distance; its growling tinnitus. hands that cup the crescent of the scalp’s luminous satellite. sending signals down to the gravity of shins. warmth licking the roots of tree-dirt. think the bellrope of your childhood’s swing. think a bath where petals of chamomile swim like albino fish. i will sieve the cold scent of this water through my knuckles. now, the rinse of vinegar and honey raging its cinnamon-colored foam. a battalion of bubbles; their kamikaze crash. you say smoke never washes off. not for weeks. look how easily it climbs up the totem pole of my fingers. look how it cleans itself to camphor. look how quickly it undresses and disappears. i stretch the tarpaulin of the towel over the garden i have just watered. your hair now clean of its past. to flood the sag of your shallow dreams. to erode your nightmares. to give you the gift of a quiet head. to hold it again and again in the lullaby of my hands.