To My Raven-Haired Mistress
By Oscar S. Cisneros
I have been studying here the fantasies I use to while away the hours and days and nights without you. How can I miss a kiss a touch I've never felt or eyes I've not yet seen? I break a sweat heaving crystalline boulders at the bottom of the hourglass. They don't seem to fall fast enough. I ramble through the gilded drawers of empty bowers and run down carpeted halls with no end. All the rooms are the same: Unfinished paintings, the blank page unplowed, and a bed with no sleeper. Where are you?
In some dream not here nor there kissing sleep and wakefulness I watch for
you through sleep-eyed blinks. Like night gathering winter
without a star, I wait for you. What thought what dream
what letters on a page might bring you to me, my dark
one with light skin?
I grow weary of this game of hide and seek, of always
looking back at the pale girl on the street, of seeing
your black hair in a crowd, and of harboring this still
quiet love for you. Were I a rose, I would that you'd
pluck me from the vine and brush my petals across your
face. Give me the iron vase, the one with the dragon carved
'round its neck, for I will taste its steely waters if
it means being by you instead of alone in the garden.
You would never toss me, but if you would, I'd pray that
in my final hours I might be close to your sweet little
toes: toenails painted red wine black and, me, with my
matching petals.
But I don't dwell upon this vain death outside your window.
It's just another fantasy about you; you who see the beauty
lost in the darkness, the elegance of a web.
Will we have a raven in our home? Like children, whose budding love's unmired by mistrust; Like supplicants, whose knees bend not from duty, so will be the union in our bower. In truth, I am patient, for I would have no different. And so I lean upon the boulder, ramble slowly through the drawers, and sit in empty halls waiting for you, complete but without you.
