I Open the Door to You at 3AM
After Meg Day
It’s Saturday— I say with a sultry gasp
the only chant whose chorus we remember—
you reach for me like I was another woman
until you remember, only with me, in my arms
do you resonate in silence as you do in sound.
A shaft of pale moon reaches me, I turn to you
in the shadow we draw on the wall. These layered
covers, where our bodies plummet
and resurface—wistful coins in the fountain
of kings, your chest bobbing bronze and even
as you move against cobalt sheets. It devastates
me, the grinding of the springs when you crawl
into darkness, drag it over our bodies.
Your eyes, stars—gleaming from the dark
where I throb below and am drenched
in pulsations your pelvis yields. Sustain me
in this place of miniscule warmth that nips
at the edge of some altered existence.
You could listen while I exhale: a golden echo
like a comet passing this planet in
twilight. You conceive once more of spinning
in this echelon and materialize here
when I summon in a tone only your engorged
ego might recognize. Don’t abandon me, not this me—
cradled, claiming all the echoes of ecstasy
existed within a lyric known and sung.
I watch the speckle of coarsely toothed shapes
on the wall while the shades cut in a slight
breeze, exodus leaves me dry as a licked dog bone
until another 3am recovers this melody.
S.J. Stephens is a MFA candidate in poetry at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. In addition to publishing in a variety of journals, her first chapbook, Where All the Birds Are Dancing, was released in October 2020 by Finishing Line Press.