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Literature Text
You said your name
was Rita with a "d"
and let me blunder
my way through you.
You said I had charm
(and finesse was for amateurs)
I liked how you were a ladder,
how you could speak
in any accent you wanted;
you liked when I
did not change the sheets
or tie my hair back,
You had dropped
out of art school
in Alabama
where your father
still thought you were a virgin,
and I was bussing tables
on St. Charles.
We lived all that summer
in one room
and a kitchen.
You would fry plantains
and we would wash them down
with purple haze,
watching the musicians
silhouette their souls
against the sky.
On weekends
you would tell fortunes
in Jackson Square
and men would pay
just to watch your copper hair
spill out their future
across the cards.
The city had never
seemed so clean
so fragrant with rain
and the daze of hibiscus
rioting in the courtyard
followed us in our sleep.
But autumn came too soon,
hooded in chill -
its mood ugly and resentful.
I watched you deadhead someone's roses
in the yard -
knowing you only
pretended to read my mind,
the sadness in you
a blunt instrument
and felt just like my father
when he knew his soul
had lost its tether.
was Rita with a "d"
and let me blunder
my way through you.
You said I had charm
(and finesse was for amateurs)
I liked how you were a ladder,
how you could speak
in any accent you wanted;
you liked when I
did not change the sheets
or tie my hair back,
You had dropped
out of art school
in Alabama
where your father
still thought you were a virgin,
and I was bussing tables
on St. Charles.
We lived all that summer
in one room
and a kitchen.
You would fry plantains
and we would wash them down
with purple haze,
watching the musicians
silhouette their souls
against the sky.
On weekends
you would tell fortunes
in Jackson Square
and men would pay
just to watch your copper hair
spill out their future
across the cards.
The city had never
seemed so clean
so fragrant with rain
and the daze of hibiscus
rioting in the courtyard
followed us in our sleep.
But autumn came too soon,
hooded in chill -
its mood ugly and resentful.
I watched you deadhead someone's roses
in the yard -
knowing you only
pretended to read my mind,
the sadness in you
a blunt instrument
and felt just like my father
when he knew his soul
had lost its tether.
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Comments35
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Damn. You have such a beautiful way with words! I wish I could write like you. !!!!!!