From “The Opposite of
Claustrophobia: Prime’s Anti-Autobiography”
I forgot admiring women who refuse to paint their lips.
I forgot
the liberating anonymity conferred by travel: Mindanao, Berlin, Melbourne,
Amsterdam, Istanbul became hours requiring no count.
I forgot
obviating memory for what I believed was a higher purpose.
I forgot
feeling you in the air against my cheek.
*
I forgot
longing for a sky without horizon, but acceding instead to the eye’s clamor
against the opposite of claustrophobia.
I forgot
you thought of me as you paced the streets of a city whose sidewalks memorized
the music of my footsteps dancing away from youth into courage.
I forgot I
lit alleys by leaving scarlet roses whose perfume, I hoped, you would discern.
I forgot
you saw each virgin moon as a ruby you wanted for adorning my body.
I forgot
you startled the girl whose poetry elicits dragon scales from empathetic
muscles.
*
I forgot
England with its glazed chintzes bearing sprays of rose, peony, hydrangea and
gladiola—names evoking country houses: Bowood, Amberley, Sissinghurst,
Sutherland.
I forgot
the rest of Greece, its national heat waiting.
I forgot
you falling asleep in my skin to dream.
*
I forgot
radiance must penetrate if it is to caress, and its price can never reach
blasphemy.
—Eileen R.
Tabios
