Let’s Ruin Lives to Each Other

Come on: let’s ruin lives

to each other. Let’s marry

our businesslike hurts, our lusts.

To happily ever after

transmute lust into prayer.
 
 

I think you

a kitchen knife,

or a lifetime of raspberries.

And you, you speak like Amsterdam streetlamps.
 
 

There’s a loose

knowing down my bones

we’re meant to smolder

in apricot blossoms.
 
 

Marry me as only you

could slit me open – and you do –

so lily-faced poems come tumbling

down the tablecloth.
 
 

At our wedding we might drink hazy weather

from tiny Chinese cups.
 
 

Take off your clothes

with all the migration of grief

settled in their outskirts.
 
 

Tell me (that kingdom

of irises under your eyes

blooms and blooms and blooms)

how your tongue

got tangled in the brambles

of the first kiss
 
 

and all about

the butchering novelty of light

on those sheets where you

had just lost

your silky virginity.
 
 

How long has it been since

you last were asked

to unfurl

the creamy narrative of your nipples?
 
 
 

Lourdes Verónica is a Moscow-born translator and teacher currently living in Rome. Her poems were featured in In My Bed Magazine (Canada), the Silver Birch Press I Am Waiting Poetry Series, Lavender Review, Window Cat Press, Winamop, Chantwood Journal, and Fable Online, as well as nominated for 2015 Pushcart Prize. Her poems in Spanish found their home in the Margen Cero Magazine.
 
 

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