The beat, beat of her drum

Coming for me from deep within the forest of my mind

Beats like footsteps coming nearer

My heart pounding in my ears.

Perhaps she will turn away,

Her steps receding into the distant business of life

But what if she turned this way

Noticing me as I hide underneath my fear.

What if she saw me

And I her.

The flow of light intense between us

Would I burst into flames

At being seen?

Would she be singed, or

Perhaps, utterly immune to tales of my heart.

Or would she too

Simmer, smoke, and catch fire herself

Her innards removed and lay bare on the table

Sampled in tiny morsels by my curiosity

Or devoured by my imperfections in seeing her soft skin exposed?

What would I find in the folds of her brain

Or the softness of her inner thighs

Would I become obsessed or even deranged

By flesh and thoughts so foreign

Or would her meat be but ordinary

And forgotten after the licking of the fingers.

And yet, it is probably nothing,

Not the beating of hearts or even the pattering of feet

But merely the fantasies of my mind

Seeing life in the corporal realm of existence

Where mortals flounder in the living and dying

Seeking to be essential and noticed

In our songs, sung on stages

Neith the arch of our lives

From nothing to nothing

And but a flash in between.

Roe

Sept 2022