Crossword, by Rosalyn Marhatta

Crossword
By Rosalyn Marhatta

She tasted his name in her mouth,
the hardness of consonants soft
as lemon rind against her teeth,
roundness of vowels dripped
honey wax from her lips
kissed at 8 a.m.

A pillow cradled the crossword
scribbled with smiles in green ink
on Sunday morning as their bodies
sought each other abandoning
time and thoughts of anything
but larking on a featherbed.

Sometimes though, syllables
collided like worry beads
and crashed to the floor where kittens
pawed at anything and chewed
at his photo in a magazine.

She picked up the syllables
in a dustpan, tossed them outside,
then pulled him back into
a bed of passionate distraction,
sparklers and ocean waves.

Author’s Comment: This poem came to me when I thought about difficulties in relationships and how on Sunday mornings when all you have to think about is making love and sharing the challenges of a crossword puzzle, it can be wonderful. I don’t know where the kittens came from but there was an orange stray cat I was attached to in Saudi Arabia (when I lived there). It ran into my home one day and knocked over the birdcage with two birds I was taking care of for a vacationing neighbor. The birds survived. My heart almost didn’t.

Bio: Rosalyn Marhatta loves to write poetry and solve computer problems. Her mind travels to inner space looking for poems. She’s traveled the world, lived in Saudi Arabia and Guam where she avoided too much sun. Her poems appear in Referential Magazine, Eclectic Flash, The Dead Mule, Diamond Diva Magazine and soon to be in Vox Poetica. Find her on twitter @poetic_line.