sestina.

Captive

Something like life watches from the window,
analyzes this portrait of woman and man.
Touching the frame, his hair is a sunset of red
in what is left lingering of light.
She wraps around his tender throat a scarf,
and this is the lover’s triumph.

They’re lonely in a crowd of triumph
that sits outside the window.
He stands and hides inside his scarf;
this perfectly structured man—
or maybe it’s just the light
under which they both once read.

She stares and feels and knows the red
hair that takes her silly life captive, triumphs.
And now the heavy things are light
as they sit beside the curious window
that reveals the room of another man
in another plaid and perfumed scarf.

Her man sees the otherworldly scarf.
In it, no hint of red,
just a piece of fabric on another man
who is her eye’s triumph.
They consider the man in his window,
his face drifting from darkness to light.

She is not in favor of her little room’s light
that sleeps above the soft, calm scarf,
but she cannot leave the stubborn window
that distracts her, like a poem she read.
She knows she must stay, that the glass will triumph,
and she’ll fall back into the arms of her man.

She exists here, her breath is this man
whose foamy-white skin, and light
caramel eyes are her heart’s triumph.
She purchased that complex, knotted-up scarf
and cries out ink that is red,
two feet from the parted window.

Separating light from the red
in the scarf, of the man,
it is the window who triumphs.