What is a heart for,
but to break by something
as soft, or as fragile as
love?
We were condemned to be lovers.
Who were we before we were eternals?
Was I a princess and he a thief,
victims to a crime of passion?
What made us be
tortured by Nature so?
We are like Eurydice and Orpheus,
made to be each other’s shadow,
watching as we cross over our respected planes.
Like Pyramus and Thisbe,
we are eaten by the lion,
swallowed by eclipse,
passing each other on the gravity
of bated breath.
Crazed with the scent of salt on my skin,
he foams, rabid for my heat,
drowning like Ophelia,
washing the gilded sands of a hamlet with a manicured hand
he has formed out of the white capped waves.
We are rabid for touch,
using the Earth as a vessel for our love.
I heat the stone in Solstice,
and watch as he saps my kiss from the onyx,
humidity curling from his mouth,
as he laps over my imprint
over and over again.
I am reminded, as night spreads across the sky,
and as the world becomes a delusion of shadow and silver,
that he is the Lord of Beasts,
the sort that are always hungry,
and I grow eager to feed him again,
for I have fallen Prey,
selfishly thinking to scorch the Earth entirely,
if it meant that I would see him bow down and mend my burns
again.
I grow dizzy with desperation as he shifts through his phases,
baring his scars before he dissolves into the umber.
I trace his craters over in the sky,
afraid that I will lose him to the Heavens
like Artemis and Orion.
Moon,
could there be anything sweeter than your name?
Silver, like the blade,
whole like any day you are in,
or a compass,
for I am never lost,
even in my humid haze,
and that is the truth.
Moon,
come back into my light,
let me make wax your body in gold,
for you, are my sweet King of Dawn and Dusk,
seated by me on cellophane and dreams,
in fair Verona, where we lay our scene.
Moonlight, and Sunbeam,
a limerick of limerence,
an ode to audacity
to love foolishly.
*
Art from @wiresandtrees on X.
*
The Word Not World (WNW) series is an interactive anthology where I show a picture, and use the words inspired by the picture to make a poem, such as this one. This poem was inspired by the words, “the juxtaposition of eternal,” from @angela.psalm, “truth,” from @debbie_o_bottled_up_feelings, “limerence,” from @nate.debar, “darkness” from @catscratch345, “compass” from
, and “the lovers,” from .Thank you all for your inspiration! If you would like to participate in next week’s Word not World series, keep an eye out on Instagram @enis.st.sparrow and here on St. Sinjin, I will post a picture on Sunday.
“passing each other on the gravity
of bated breath” - 🔥🖤
Beautiful poem😍