Runaway
Bare on the stained mattress,
hair spread beneath her
like the flame of a rising sun,
this runaway, this woman fleeing
her midlife, waits for the crazy man.
He lives in a jade forest,
cabin carved with his fingernails.
They've spied on him since Nam,
he's told her, aiming satellites close
in to listen, painting cryptic messages
across the sky with their jets.
She doesn't care.
She half believes him, wants
to believe him in her rush to escape
her glass house by the sea.
For that moment,
that sweep into another life
in her wish for a new man inside her,
a fresh mouth suckling her breast
she has given up everything, but
he carves deeper into the forest.
The voices say she's the enemy, too.
Thorns cut her feet leaving.
Judas kisses away her tears.
A cross marks the road home.
Pris Campbell
©2006
Art: I Lock My Door Upon Myself
by Fernand Khnopff (portion of painting)
Published in The Cliffs: Soundings,
March 2008
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