Don’t, Marie.

by Suzanne Allen

Black-eyed and necklaced in gold

she almost smiles, thinks

she might jump from the Pont

Marie or slowly descend

the stone steps to the water slapping

the quai… Don’t, Marie.

He only did it once.  Now

she carries him on her shoulders—

the weight of the world—one

of his hands blocks her depth perception.

How far is the water?  Upstairs,

inside, he drinks and toasts the purple

phantoms of his youth.

Remember, she thinks,

when our toes touched the clouds?

How it felt to sweep skyward, then

be pulled back to the tracks in the sand,

tracks without trains or veins or any other things

to carry her blood and bones away

besides the tide. 

But green is the color of healing and

things left in the shade too long, so she waits—

for rain and thunder, a crack of light in the sky

bluer than she, strains her white

eyes but can’t see

the colors, only the banister up there

in their window… His piano notes

sliding down, and all around her the wind

flicks them at her feet like little threats,

like rain. Somewhere in a room up there

she once slept, soundly—the sheets on the day,

bed the color of memory, of dreams—

but the railing can’t save them—these

notes, those dreams—couldn’t

be any less useful. She can’t see the colors,

only the black-eyed notes

tumbling, light split by the panes. 

Splitting pain.

Something she meant to say before

she shut the door.

* * * * *

Suzanne Allen holds an MFA in Poetry and is a coeditor for The Bastille (of Spoken Word Paris). Her poems have been published in print and online journals such as Cadence Collective, California Quarterly, Carnival, Cider Press Review, Crack the Spine, Hobo Camp Review, Nerve Cowboy, Pearl, San Pedro River Review, Spillway, Spot Lit, Tears in the Fence and Upstairs at Duroc. Anthology publications include Not a Muse, (Haven Books,) The Heart of All that Is, (Holy Cow Press,) Strangers in Paris, (Tightrope Books,) Veils, Halos and Shackles, (Kasva Press,) and Villanelles, (Knopf.) She also creates videos of poets reading their work, which can be found on YouTube at Vlogosophy. Her first chapbook, verisimilitude, is available at CorruptPress.net, and her most recent chapbook, Little Threats, was published just this summer by Picture Show Press. "Don't, Marie" sparked the title for this collection.