FIRST LOVE
In those days you were something
felt but not seen
as you handed me love letters
written in dead languages.
The chain link fence behind me
made cold diamonds on my back
and your head was on my shoulder
with only one breath between us.
Your hair against my face
smelled like woodsmoke and chocolate,
your lust was raw and new,
as jagged and dangerous as rocks beneath the waves.
Now I’m trapped here like a ghost
haunting places that no longer exist,
feeding on frost and hummingbirds
during long November nights.
—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
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Damien Echols: “I’ve always considered myself more of a taker of divine dictation than a writer. Poems are the ghosts that follow me back from visits to my sacred places, and I commit them to paper in order to get them out of my head.” (twitter)
