Desire, Someday Poem by Matthew Christopher

At fifteen she understood pleasure.
Now an old woman,
she has only the memory.
blotches of pleasure bleed into her mind
like watercolour,
like the light that evaporates into the dark.

Like her I understand pleasure.

Desire doesn't come from a perfect body;
it comes from certain things.
It's a population that feeds itself
cannibalizing, breeding.

I want desire,
but for them.
They don't have room in their garden
for tomatoes or chickens
or quails or bamboo.

I am more ambitious than she is.

Someday,
the unwanted ends of the cigarettes,
the ones, red lipstick on one end
burnt on the other
that litter the tracks that run through the platform
will be mine.

But it wasn't me who threw them over the yellow line.
I will have sold them all,
and she will be a mannequin for my laurels.