Persephone

Otherworld child emerging
restored
to set a gentle
lingering squeeze on leg
or arm.
And so it begins:
The way you clear food from your teeth with your tongue
The swagger in your hipsway
The palm pressed to my chest
Delicious smile betraying a distant diastema
and the mascara clotted on your lashes
The softness of your hand against mine as you studied it in the dark of the taxi
The ease at which you issue profanity
A frozen frame of you drinking beer from a bottle
The alabaster tone of your belly and filaments of blond against tanned forearms
Your comfort in nudity
The exquisite knots of your vastus laterales
Apatite eyes
framed by the most elegantly arched brows
A tousled cascade of hair as you slept
The frankness in the admission of your selfishness
Your appetites
The scent of the fleece you lent me
and the brilliance of your athletics
But so it has to end:
Return you to the other side.
I’ll be a thousand miles away
always to share Demeter’s recurring despair.

Martin Ricardo-Jones