by Linda Ferguson
When we kissed just now, your mouth
tasted like the coffee and apricots they
used to serve on the Orient Express –
remember the blue-green trees and
the minarets, how the cinnamon
turned bitter in its tin? I still keep a coin
in that metal box, and pretend that it came
from some other country,
or I picture myself inside a theater,
its entrance cordoned off
with tasseled gold rope and its heavy
curtains hanging like the long, full
sleeves of a medieval queen, or I see us
on that safari, when you were
the lion, pawing at the dust,
and I was the turtle in the
pond, sunning my back on
a log. But when I close my
eyes right now, darling, I am a
dolphin, muscular and sleek,
my body rising, a perfect arc.
Linda Ferguson, in her heart, is famous.
When we kissed just now, your mouth
tasted like the coffee and apricots they
used to serve on the Orient Express –
remember the blue-green trees and
the minarets, how the cinnamon
turned bitter in its tin? I still keep a coin
in that metal box, and pretend that it came
from some other country,
or I picture myself inside a theater,
its entrance cordoned off
with tasseled gold rope and its heavy
curtains hanging like the long, full
sleeves of a medieval queen, or I see us
on that safari, when you were
the lion, pawing at the dust,
and I was the turtle in the
pond, sunning my back on
a log. But when I close my
eyes right now, darling, I am a
dolphin, muscular and sleek,
my body rising, a perfect arc.
Linda Ferguson, in her heart, is famous.
