Your wine-deep
Eyes wound
In the dark
The gift of abandon on your lips:
Open roses to my thirst
Exultant petals
***
I spilled the wine
The stain spreading
Over my prince’s white scarf
A sign the rains of distance
Had come between us
City lights on your aging skin
No longer dark promise
Of your solar throat
Throbbing around me
In the Metro tunnel
I encircled your waist
Found your mouth, teeth closed gates
We take different exits
Your gaze blazes through my raincoat
I resist the urge to turn
We each retreat
To another language
To the land of absence
Ronnie Scharfman was a professor of French literature at Purchase College for 30 years. She has been in poetry and midrash writing workshops for almost that long. In 2013 she published her first chapbook: In Poem & Prayer.