Your perfumed words and rose-petal theories <br />have long since lost their potency, as have you. <br />The wine has turned to water, and there is no <br />salt with which to tempt my tongue. <br /> <br />I may be foolish to have believed in the cherry red clouds, <br />the fluffy vessels that carried me above the indolence and <br />bloodlessness, suspending me in my own gentle reality. <br />My nails are black with the grit of clawing <br />the ground on which I dwell. <br /> <br />The evangelical counsel made an easy mark of me. <br />I reasoned that you were like the wind; I could feel you <br />and your power, though intangible and slight. Ephemeral. <br />I swallowed all of it, thinking I’d tasted honey, <br />waiting to drink more. <br /> <br />And then… <br /> <br />There was an uneasy calm. The silence squelched the music. <br />My face was smacked with shame for my lack of conviction. <br />I had attempted my own conversion of the other mirky souls <br />only to find that I had been preaching twice-chewed words. <br />These words that even you had never really trusted. <br /> <br />I crawl through each hour with skyward, darting eyes, <br />scanning for cherubs, on rippling red clouds and other signs <br />of fabled dogma. Though disenchanted, I still hoard some <br />sort of hope that the magic does exist. <br /> <br />It’s what keeps me breathing.<br /><br />Tara Teeling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/your-persuasion/
