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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

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