(inspired by ceilings & a community dedicated to redheads)

or, Symposium.

This girl walking around the kitchen,
is half naked
and she doesn’t know that she is
beautiful, unaware

the boy on the living room floor
has stirred away the sleep
from the corner of his eyes to see her
wrong way up
walking the walls
on the balls of her feet

The sun on her skin, warm honey on heat, hair
red fire

He thinks her every move is a chord.

* * *

He is not performing
for her, he is facing away
he has spent a great deal of
time picking notes off her skin
strumming off the quiver of her breath
now he has focused
callused
fingers on the results, reciting
six string sympathies.

To her this world is a whitewashed posterwalled
dream.
Magnet mojo paste blender nylon spin.
She is still
in the dark
laying bricks with every breath
after their orchestra tore the wall apart.

They reform; lying on her side she sees him sitting
wrong way up
legs to the ceiling like
his fingers over her heart

What a dream, she thinks,
cigarette smoke in hair and air
a maladroit maestro wrapped
over wood weaving a song
of indeterminable origin

since she decides
not to question
whether it is something old
or something taught,
the moment will pass where
she finds it is something
learned
from her
when she held a breath
travelling the kitchen ceiling.