Colorless Rooms


In the lineup of old lovers,
he never appears,
yet he was the one who peeled back my skin,
slipped fingers beneath breastbone.
Odd, his disappearance, when a decade
of heart thumps had to pass
before flesh closed and healed.

I wonder if his next love remembers.

Maybe those men who once slung their arms
'round our necks, painted hieroglyphs with lips
on our breasts, wake now in colorless rooms,
bewildered to find no woman beneath them.
Maybe they remember a dimming face,
a distant laugh...a sigh,
& dream of those days when their hands
still forged fingerprints into the hollows of time.



Pris Campbell
©2007 (revised 2008)


Published in In The Fray, September 2008

Nominated for a Pushcart Prize Dec 2008
Thank you, In The Fray!


Art: Hidden Artemis by Elena Ray
      copyrighted and used with permission

Please see more of her wonderful art by visiting her website HERE


Return to Poetry Index I
Return to Homepage