Scorned Poem by Val Morehouse

I sent the moon as my message.
Finger curved and beckoning, it came back
'addressee unknown' your answer
blowing around my feet like dry leaves.

Long gone tears pressed out of me,
as I became that once-upon-a-spring
flower flattened between pages of your life.
You still imagine me wearing this habit

you gave me, my chaste sleep a keepsake saved
between cold sheets and the sleet of carelessness.
But lover, there is more to me than this
throwaway nun of your dreams.

Telling old times like beads,
I refuse to be crucified by indifference.
I resemble nothing you’ve ever seen.
In your absence my nails have grown long and red.

I cut those curls you liked so much.
In your shadow I dance all night to a
rhythm older than both of us.
Trouble swirls about me like perfume.

I smile at strangers in the street, and they turn
staring at me with eyes blue, brown, green.
I wear them like jewelry.
As I pass doors melt open for me.

Suddenly wives, children seem unimportant.
And when the last man lifts to me like a stag,
I laugh, knowing each swing of ecstasy is a
knife sharpened into the last laugh.