Last Dance

Embers smoulder.
In the white smoke, like the jewellery. 
In a store, or the innumerable pearls
By Eden's seashore, our memories glitter. 
With the same intensity as that of
The oxygen-starved air, those memories –
our friendship – wring our senses,
Our hearts, our souls; Mnemosyne reappears. 
She hands me the past in stoppered bottles. 
The air becomes heavy with her chants,
The past seeps through the lid,
And settles on the environs,
Enveloping us with an intoxicating scent. 
Time moves backwards,
And the past is reborn. 

Ballrooms are embellished, new curtains are hung. 
Daffodils and forget-me-nots smile under the Autumn Sun. 
The chairs are burnished, the furniture in the room
Are freed of their decade-long gloom. 
The windows refract light that breathes life 
Into the paintings on the wall.
Ten lovers from my ten best years come
Asking me to honour the promise of a last dance. 
But why does the sky still break into 
A violent cry, shearing the skin of the clouds,
While we waltz among the stars? 

Gazing at the white rings of pigeons
Do we dream of better days? No. 
What's best is already past, there's nothing
More our hearts could ask for. 

O Insomniac Moon!
Would you let me drink your blood 
And make me immortal as you?

Abdullah gracefully drowns in the proses of Joyce, Dostoevsky, Faulkner. Call him ashore at asabdullah.ag@gmail.com