Dulcet Smile

A dulcet smile.

A sinister grin.

The bone man’s knocking,

looking for my skin again.

…sepia tones of a long-lost night,

in some yellow-lit, posh joint.

Your eyes looked like empty ashtrays,

Begging for a cigarette,

or a little kiss,

from the coquine in the doorway,

“I’m sure I know the way.”

I believe I was an arrow then,

suspended on whiskey lips in the alleyway.

In the midnight Scotch mist,

we found the flickering flames to illuminate the winding path.

You told me, “Don’t kill me. Promise you won’t kill me.”

Wayward wanderers on the waves, tripping into a new lust.

And then the same sleepless reckoning,

as always.

Fleeing in the morning, distracted kisses under a cigarette,

and a Frenchman in a baseball cap.

And then the age-old, “on ne verra jamais.”

…ages later, paths cross in the same curvy, cobblestoned lane,

you ask me, “how are you getting along?”

A dulcet smile.

You’ve waited awhile.

I don’t blame you.

We were miserable but so irresistible.