Maven Columbia

I remember a late night,

Sometime in the old age of my youth

I sat in a booth with a woman that I hadn’t learned to love yet.

Who would never love me.

We talked, like always, about the devil, and rebels, and fear.

About Lancer and Lace

And how she tried to hold in his brain,

while it slipped between her fingers.

When the chicory coffee lost its puissance, and the 

Fluorescent buzz insisted on the edges of my sanity

I pressed my chapped lips to the edge of the mug, pretending

That the ceramic didn't burn me.

I was not numb, 

I felt everything, like

A naked nerve

But I did not recoil.

Her knuckles were white on the edge of the table, and

Her blue eyes stretched out and cast a net.

Tried to tangle me in a Bette Davis glamour.

But her silver screen had long since turned to rust,

And despite my best efforts to be held,

I slipped her celluloid net.

I stared out the window, trying to find some meaning

In the snowflakes turned to gilded chandeliers

By sodium vapor.

I told her that I wanted to stay with her, but

I didn’t know why.

In the youth of my adulthood

I’d trade confederate coffee for

one point seven-five liters of poison

That muddled my blood as I sat

In that same booth.

I spent a few drops of Copper Country blood

On bacon and eggs.

Like always, she settled into me, an embrace.

Her red hair stuck to the sweat on my neck

And the heat of her made me itch.

But I held her like

Lace held Lancer

As tightly as I could

Without crushing her.

As we sat and watched the last of the fireworks

Arcing down from the moon,

Like always, I felt her 

Begin to slip between my fingers.