It Felt Sinful Drinking Water

It felt sinful drinking water
Hot desert nights, when
Humidity was winter stuff,
Breezes were imagined, only,
Temperatures took on sauna
Qualities.

We saw no clouds, just sky, forever
The mirage of a Caribbean inlet
The benediction of belief found in
The abrasions from a sirocco or a
Parching, drought-bidden
Fast.

In such heat, I turned to you,
Your glistening forehead,
Ruddy nose, chafing lips,
Those flowers left on sunlit
Sills; those dry, wind-blown
Memories.

I didn’t know yet which
Of those fading petals would
Wilt onto a scrapbook page
Or wither into the abyss
Of the Unremembered
Or linger, here

Where heartfelt barren lands
More than dunes, khamsins,
Sundered longings, sorrow,
Rendered love akin to glassy
Inversions, unanticipated
Chills

Where seasons come and gone
Forge the fight into an amalgamation
Of light and night, drought and flood,
Torpor and brace, and we find our
Own story whole and
Told.

 

 

About the Poets:
Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to poetry, and Unbound Content, an independent poetry press. A lifelong Bergen County, New Jersey resident, she lives, writes, and works two miles from the hospital where she was born. You can read her words at fine journals online and in print.

Pushcart Prize nominee KJ Hannah Greenberg’s lightly pert and somewhat exuberant layered writing can be found in North American, European, Oceanic, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern venues, as well as under select budgies. Her creative efforts are devoted to lovers of slipstream fiction, to second chair oboe players, and to mothers who despair of fining the bottom of Mt. Laundry. Her books are available at Amazon.

 

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