Anthology of dreams (drownedinwords) wrote, @ 2004-10-22 23:08:00

The Books

For Isabel

It was the lawyer found them first
In his least compassionate suit;
The one he wore to dismiss any
Part he bore in making decisions.
He was too nervous to look at one or the other
This one chosen, this one deserving,
And hand down judgement.

It was the investigations thrilled him most.
When his suit got dusty,
Gathering ticks on his white paper,
Crossing off the layers of a person
As he peeled them back.

He had no trouble opening the door,
Though they'd boarded it up,
For health reasons.
The name of the law is the strongest of keys,
After all. And the caretaker's hammer
Is as cheaply bought.

He was pleased by the order of the place.
There was nothing he did not find waiting,
Nothing unprepared. At the end, it seemed,
All she had was to make them ready;
The photographs of beaches and sunsets
And trinkets; the immaculate clothes,
Piles of her skin, the kind she wore when young and lusty.

And at the centre,
A pair, well bound, hand-filled.
One, she'd filled with facts.
Letters from the man she'd once imagined,
Now a banker. Making good money.
Postcards from the slut she called a princess.
Now she's married. On paper at least.
In the other book, he's olympic. She
A diplomat. And both artists on the side.
The piano's his, of course, while she
Takes pictures, a ribbon in her hair
To keep it from the lens.

Pages of red ink,
Where she traced their lives
From birth. Leaving nothing to be everyday.
The wife he had had never died
By her hand,
But given him three hearty mouths,
Who'd grown to scholars,
And made their Grandma proud. Instead
She paid for flowers in November.

The daughter'd bred, of course.
Not stayed discreet as mama wished.
A pair of whiny runts, overgrown and slimy.
Not at all what they'd come overseas to plant.
But in the red, imagine. Beloved through all the town,
Yet always chaste. Swearing allegiance only to her work,
And to the needy, the dying. Married to Athena's cause.

He gathered them all, regardless. Marked them off as
Personal.

The will dictated they be burned unread, their ashes scattered
At Dover, where she'd first seen home.
It had not been all she'd wanted. Nothing was.
But hand in hand they'd come,
Over warring blue and green,
Which cleansed them of the dirt and hunger which they left.
And it had bought them this.

Ever vigilant, the man of law
Took two days off
And saw to it personally,
Extending his stay with a hasty message home.
He'd met an old acquaintance on the shore.
A girl he'd known once in a hotel bar,
Then later on a borrowed bed.

He tasted ash in her hair when they kissed
And when he held her close.
He smelt her burning.
And that night, when he slumbered in their sweat,
Saw lines of red behind his eyes, saying only
"Faithful."