Valerie Owens
Your fingers pluck at the strings of my heart
Like the musician and his mandolin
Perhaps my heart is out of tune,
For the song you play
Sounds no longer sweetly of blissful adoration
But rather, strange, and off-key,
Like the cacophony of deceit.
The mandolin is played with violent passion
And the cords are pulled ever tighter.
Please untangle your cold hands
from the weakening threads
of my now bleeding heart
I am weary of the music.
You and I share the close proximity of my car
Jimi Hendrix falls softly from the speakers
The background to our conversation
It is trivial chatter
We talk
about nothing in particular
about anything at all
The banter of youth
My car has been parked
here
in your driveway
an hour now.
Innocently, of course
It’s Friday night
And I laugh at what the neighbors must think
of the parked car
But you don’t flirt like that
So I don’t share the joke
Jimi sings
“I just want to talk to you…”
I smile, and soak my heart in the soft rises and falls of
your voice
I just want to talk to you
I have wondered of the taste of your lips
for sometime
And now,
now that the question is satisfied
I find that curiosity has a far sweeter taste than truth
