Poetry by Aubrey Leatherwood

Today my guest is Ms. Aubrey Leatherwood, author of creative, sensual prose whose book The People You Know, The Sex They Have is up for a CAPA award (YAY, Aubrey!). Pick up a copy of her book today. You'll be glad you did...just for Ingo alone. Aubrey knows what I'm talking about, lol. Learn more about Aubrey at her website. And the great lady has seen fit to grace us with an exquisite poem about love. Enjoy!

______________________________________________________________________________________________In flashes of lily light

and honeysuckle breath

I find you.

No violet

or red, red rose

or indigo even

bring you to mind.

Only shades

cool as water cold as ice.

You don't come with scent strong like lavender

or jasmine.

Only in smells that touch me sometimes

in crowds

but never find their place.

Smells that remind me of something

that I realize late is you.

In syrup movement

not quick like lightning

You slow come to me as

Fans blowing in summer

Flies prying at screen

Hot stick-to-me day

Lazy on the porch

Hummingbird wings beat slow...

And there you are

long legs in short shorts

laying across mine become

truncated body as I grasp for your face.

In flashes of lily light

and honeysuckle breath

and grey soft memory down

you are hidden as I forget.

You are faded from bathing too long

in the bright sunlight.

A day without night

is where I've kept you.

I suppose I was wrong in that--

keeping you there,

suspended in happy times

because to animate you

would have meant

remembering everything.

You couldn't come to me

with scarlet sucking in your body,

with the scent of men's cologne

nestled in your hair or

with a burgundy slash of mouth

with sandalwood and musk

nestled in your hair or

with your mica colored hair soft

like mica, too

with those men's scents

nestled in your hair.

Those memories brought you to me,

brought you to me crystal.

Those sights I knew, those smells I knew

and yet those I would lose to

find you rose-colored hazy and bright

never in the sharp clarity of anger, regrets,

and obsession that even in dimness

painted clear your likeness.

And now, now because of my kind

distortion of you,

I cannot find you at all it seems.

I reach for you constantly and yet

am still forgetting.

I have given your sun to someone else.

Someone who easy comes to me.

I see her:

She lay bronze naked in a field

of ever-changing pansies

with green apple eyes lined in kohl

Sun catching cinnamon and nutmeg in her hair.

She smells of vanilla and (vainly I notice this)

she smells of me.

And importantly, days with her make the

nights easier to bear; never something to deny.

And still, still I grasp for your love as the light

has made it as much tantalizing as elusive.

And yet, I can no longer see your face.