A Voice

Art by Mary Woods

Between the lines of sonnet snakes

Pell-mell cascades of love that drip

Like spun sugar from flesh-warmed lips

I find a greeting waiting

Waning like the crook that lights

The marble seat that glows at night

Etched in dusky blue letters, find

A warning drops this friendly line

I know you, nothing, you know me too

Between your breaths I was the first to move

And in your temples the first to beat

The first to touch beneath your feet

Futile is a rhyme to make sense of me

Sense is a shallow layer of grime

And rhyme a shallow layer of sense

Compose something higher to trap me

A riff that speaks my illogician’s tongue

Until then, sung in darkest tones

This dusty clarity lets me know

I know nothing, you know nothing too