#rorawrites

[roramitchell]

How could I not want you - your beauty still and spare as a secret glacial lake. I, who still feel the dirt's choke from another lifetime, heard you telling me to drink. These useless hands that let both dust and water slip between them rise again and again to lips dried brown as figs.

[roramitchell]

With the touch you casually welcomed I pluck stray autumn treasure reclaimed by March winds and half-hidden in hair still dark as tents of Kedar Pine boughs by my window sway in murmuring canticles you were too wise to sing While I like a blinded dove or blossoming henna still seek out the warmth of your false spring

[roramitchell]

We All Scream (2024)

[roramitchell]

i dreamt of you last night i kissed your forehead with all the reverence of a novitiate despite the days and days your name burned a hole in my throat - an invocation that you would let me touch you again

[roramitchell]

valse à trois temps

do you want to be loved behind double hung windows grey-washed with rain, where tail lights and high beams dissolve in twin rivers of red and white bokeh from steam made by damp clothes on our loft radiator? later, we’ll laugh like accomplices over pale green konacha as we gently bump ankles sakura petals fall freed from our insteps at the 2-seater sushi bar in the Japanese grocer's (bend your neck closer) would you rather be loved in down comforter autumn mornings before i head into clinic? from the limestone-tiled bathroom i remind you to put out the recycling before you get lost in your writing unsure that you heard me as delta waves claim you enfolded in cotton imported from Egypt submerged in my scent 300 000 years spent perfecting do you want to be loved in mountain lake stillness at sunset? my breasts limned in rose gold swaying above the sharp jut of your hips on the sofa bed where you slept as a guest in the last house i rented before we both traded the pyramids and their dust-filled canopic jars for stacked mismatched coffee cups signed copies of Vonnegut paint brushes in honey pots and a diacritic-keyed Remington inexplicably found at our town’s farmers’ market that week when the vees of wild geese pointed northward and the sun dogs coursed forward if none of the above will you then teach me how you want to be loved so you also perceive the synonym of miracle is us?

[roramitchell]

déjà vu

damn, done it again - fell victim to my ego misconstrued your cues when imagining that we’d go further than politeness further than acquaintance was wrong to feel the rightness forgot i was high-maintenance let’s both laugh at the punchline the sting will feel less cruel i’ll be over it by lunchtime though i’m sixteen times a fool

[roramitchell]

the meteor and the moon he moves with a kinetic grace sharp, like the stubble that can’t quite hide that dimples abide in his thin cheeks he speaks at rapid-fire pace glance narrowed at the ceiling screens off-hand he comments that he needs a haircut - then hurtles on at speed on course till gravity intervenes with light-swift stealth he guides her hand recognition flares beneath his warmth he touches with gentle surety obliterating what others’ touch had formed transfigured - inexorably in orbit he leaves her having taught her how time appears to a meteor

[roramitchell]

Tell us about yourself i want to tell them i am a river  heedless of time's constraint incising bedrock and uplifting mountains oblivious to the bullet pointed  in the same direction (secretly i am also a dragon  crouched in her riverbed curled atop pyrite and polished stones,  surrounded by the beloved white burnished bones of small animals i can be glimpsed on lazy placid days      the glinting gold answer on the grey-green water and if you rested beside me you would learn      my heart is a swallow beating bronze-backed wings to make its way to you) Talons uncurl, the rhythms of birdsong and rivers already forsaken by fingers in practiced position tip-tapping out my credentials.