Melissa Bates
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Melissa Bates spends her days working at a University as a psychotherapist and her evenings trying to ink her way towards a little bit of peace. She is a member of Doc Brown's traveling poetry troupe, and has been a feature poet at the Fireside Reading Series in Cambridge, MA. Melissa grew up in Brockton, has lived in the Boston area for the past 10 years, and may someday move to the west coast to live amongst the hippies where she belongs.
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Tiny Diamonds
If we met for tea,
14 years later,
I wonder what you'd say about that night,
how you'd remember it differently from me,
if you would remember at all
I'd tell you what I remember most:
the exact spot where you parked
the car that Winter night,
the bottom of that dead end street
just past the elementary school,
starched gray front end
facing the baseball field
Would you remember the way
you crawled to the passenger side seat,
your body twisted on top of mine,
the sound of my voice saying,
don't! ?
Would you remember yourself saying,
I promise, I won't?
If we sat down for tea now,
I'd tell you that I focused on the links
of the fence behind home plate
while you moved inside me,
how I watched through tiny diamonds
playground swings in the far distance,
silver dots swaying
I'd tell you the way
I remember the ride home,
highway a fleeing thing,
body turned away from you,
hovering like a ghost against the car door,
cheek pressed cool against window glass,
counting sliding images:
tree, star, house
If we could meet for tea now
would you still call it love?
Valentine
It's because of you
that I can't see roses
without also seeing stairs,
covered in dust and cobwebs
where you used to leave them,
one or two dozen at a time,
as apologies,
like the color red had
some kind of magical healing power
I could bathe myself in
And it's not that I didn't try
picking the petals one by one,
placing them on my body just to see
what they would look like against
the soft white of my 16 year old skin
Still I found my preference
In the sharpened green of thorns
against the cracked point of entry
where you led me in the first place
Waste
Tonight I saw
you in the mirror,
paper thin skin merely
draping over bones,
head hanging down,
hair the color of Scotch whiskey
spilling over egg breasts and
I remembered the way
I used to love the slowing
of my own pulse,
how even the blue of my veins
became both beautiful and
dangerous under moonlight,
how silver flat blades tasted
like candy underneath my tongue,
how blood was the only
proof of potency and
how I used to catch sight of myself
in strange bathroom stalls,
arms curled around porcelain,
slick forehead lightning smack!
against toilet seats with each involuntary
seize of my body and
maybe this is why
I wanted to slip
my fingers underneath your ribs,
lift you right off the ground,
scream something about cracks and time
and life needing to be more
than just a habit
do something other than listen to
your breath leak like air from a tire,
a slow hissssssssss
before the final pop.
Tonight the mirror showed me
what happens to the dead
and the dying,
so I took a step back,
crouched down into the black
crescent of your shadow,
steadied my arms,
waited for your fall.
