Well-Wishing Poem by MARINA GIPPS

We are late-bloomers, vials of acid, you say.
Is that why I am always withering away?
Someday I shall be immune
given that I have been toxic for so long.
When will I be pure?
I am tired of waiting.

Soiled so long I am quickly degrading.
Call this the melodrama of dreams.
Why I am here and you are over there.
So long ago it seems that I am eroding.
I shall forget though not soon enough
for a wishing well of dreams borders a graveyard.

How long ago I sat upon the edge of this
stone monument of rain,
contemplating the length of my shadow
fallen into oblivion’s underground flow.
My face, moss-covered awaiting my crime
in waves of love burying my smile.

And so I confess I kissed a girl who loved me.
A spider in its desecrated maze.
It was not a first love, but a dare.
Like a tomb it clung to me until I disregarded it
by delving deep inside her cavernous mouth
with dreams deepening into a place far from the sun
where only the strangest flowers grow.

Those bridal-peeked daisies of long ago
with their deaths in soil, their soily deaths.
Sinking as I wish for a return to where no life awaits me.
And where no awaiting involves this soiled life.