Prettier

Your skin is translucent, like fine china

I can see just far enough to discern your names,

To feel the spear-tip anger that built your fortress.

I wish I were prettier.

Not just better than the thieves and grifters

Bent on wasting touch and time, carving

A lingering scar in the Mona Lisa of your smile.

My most petulant chakras want to be

Another handsome drunken artist

But that foolish trade is done...

I am an antique, partially restored

By faith in the unrequited,

An irony neither lost nor disrespected

In this comet flight across the

Familiar orbit of your shining night.

It is only in the infinite

That transubstantiation calls

Us into being

Ever-becoming

Ever-renewing

Ever-choosing to accept

what is offered.

In deference and amazement

At miracles that look

Nothing like

What we wanted.

©2009 J.Barrett Wolf