Poetry by Alex Behar

Summer Snow

A love that burned slow like the blushing edge of a cigarette,

Each long drag igniting the skin,

My chest filled with stretches of deep silence,

I held you in,

And released you in a billowing cloud that dissipated into the air,

Lingering like the figment of a dormant dream,

The years turned over,

Each passing season folding us deeper into each other like the wings of a monarch gestating in a linen cocoon,

I remember visiting you,

Hauling through the dense winter,

Snow flurrying through the air in a brilliant, white arpeggio,

I would arrive at your door,

You lived in an old, weather-beaten, colonial home, characteristic of the Northeast,

And there you stood,

A little kiln, stoking flames in the glowing chamber of your belly,

Wearing your loneliness like the elaborate headdress of an ancestral bride,

That bright smile,

A wildfire that swept across your face,

Your eyes so big I stumbled into them,

Your spirit was ruptured,

Hemorrhaging violently, 

I couldn’t see it then,

But I cried for you,

Many times over,

On that greyhound home.