Of Poems

Here's a poem I wrote.

Candles
-----
I light my candles
and nobody touches me.
I am thus privileged.

They ask what I remember:
hot breath and cold sweat,
the rustle of robes, hitched high,

and his voice, bass,
when he gave them to me.
“Thine vestments,” he

said, a secret curl on his lip.
A moment of cresting
ugliness rolls over me.

It breaks, and rolls back,
and he lets go with deep whispers.
That is what I tell them. My words make dust:

it blooms like summer pollen, silent and tenuous,
then settles
in slow motion

while I watch and
wait, trapped in my life,
half awake: I'm a winter sky dawning.

In the end, he leaves how he came: quietly, candles flickering.