mala* III**
kelly grace smith
I take my seat beside you, wind into your mind;
move over you
like fingers round the mala.
I smell the scent of you: smoke and sex and sorrow.
I reach into your soul, yet
I cannot touch you.
Wars wage, diseases rage, but alas
I suffer no more.
And so, the spell is broken.
Our moment of magnificence
gone.
Though you watch through the window of my soul,
the door to you
remains closed.
And so
I go.
But I leave behind the truth of me;
the sacred certainty
of this
intimacy.
*Mala is a strand of beads Buddhists use for meditation.
**From the collection, “And so we dance.”
