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Emily

 

The sky has ripened long enough, and we are rotting here.

I’ve bridled the youngest mare.

Frost is on the flowers and my promise in your ear

living in the home they’d ply with prayers.

 

I’ll look for the lamplight in the window by the hall.

And if I see your silhouette,

I will hold my horse as long as she is tall.

And I will love you more than I have yet.

 

Hope is in circumferences, and I trust in my mare.

She’s never let me down.

We can crop her cadences and whip her with the air.

It’s just a hundred miles to Boston town.

 

And I’ll remember you the way your letters do.

And I’ll remember you the way your diaries do.

 

You are just a metaphor for what you want to be.

And one day you’ll define

debauchery as sunlight as it’s slanted at the sea,

and religion in the rhythm of the line.

 

I never would have made you be the thing that you despise,

or put a title to your throat.

They will make a myth of you, but I will canonize

every ribbon that you ever wrote.

 

Is escape captivity? The prison that you chose

keeps you like a flower chained to snow.

I have pruned uncertainties before their petals froze.

But the roots you’ve written mean you cannot go.

 

Were you in that lie of white as you watched me ride off?

I prefer the calico or brown.

You’ve cut me deeper than the colour of that cloth.

It’s just a hundred miles to Boston town.

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© Audsongs 2018

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