Riad Balkisse
We roamed through the dark back alleyways of
the foreign cities foreign only to us
our hearts in our throats from a drunken left turn
that left the night air stale and sour
It was in Riad Balkisse in that gasping Moroccan morning sun
where the rays pierced the ceiling and lit your face in reds
and greens and blues and I threw
my legs over you and I learnt what it was to work
to live to love to feel
and you would sing me to sleep with the sweetest of lullabies
you the nightingale and I the lark
But I have written a thousand poems for you
every word was for you and if I could
I would have turned each letter into an origami crane
and if I could I would have made us into those cranes
and we could have loved for a thousand years
in absolute purity breathless and weightless
we would have seen the world from above
and I would have seen the letters of your legs and
I would have written the alphabet for you
so in every desperate breath of the crestfallen lovers
your name would be true
I still speak your name
in the darkest hours I call for you
into night time streets lit up with snow
and Elizabeth I too have broken down in Grand Central Station
I too have suffered for love I have suffered long
I have fallen down drunk in your doorway at 3am calling you out
in a silent sacrifice like Eloisa I was sworn to silence by the one I loved best
I know what it is to betray and what it is to be betrayed
I still would have held you while you hurt me
I know relief comes from the strangest of places
I sacrifice myself for you
because I have felt the iron circumstances of life that make love and pain the same
And I would have let you make love and pain the same
I would let you turn my life cliché
because I know that love can cure pain I know that love too often is the cause
I know that the alphabet wasn’t written for you or for me
or for the lovers lusting in illuminated despair
I know that life isn’t poetry and I know that love isn’t either
for if life was poetry
I think I would write this one over
Katie Salomon
