'Rosetta Park' Poem by Marty McKenna

i asked you for a season. we went
longer than that. i can still make sense
of your room with the high ceiling,
the new bed where we tapped out

syllables on each others skin. you
taught me not to use the word
beautiful in a poem, for ‘we
were poets'. it wasn't long before our

declarations. fuchsia buds sang
plump songs just outside the pale,
muslin-draped windows. you
were my first ekphrasis. nourishing

solitude sacrificed before the altar
you and i had built, hand by hand.

first published in 'perverted by language'