Lady Jail '11

The first installment of Lady Jail occurs.
This spring - you are taller, and heavier, and your hair
smells like boy's hair that's been washed by the wind and the dirt.
I zip up my jacket around both you and I, because you ask me to.
Now you are closed within lady jail.
The breezes blow; the men are hungover
with trucker voices from the carping and yelling
of the bachelor's party from the night before.
The gardens are planted, and you lean
your bushy, dirty
blond head back into my neck.
And we keep each other warm, as you ask
me to tell you a story, which I attempt at-
but fail, since it's about a beautiful and isolated
island in the Adriatic sea, where there sits
a castle, looking like a painting;
set against blue and white immovable waves
winding flat from the cliff above it all.
I knock your legs and feet with mine, and
make you dance like a puppet -
and this you enjoy, and laugh a jester's chuckle at.
Your hands find the secret pockets at the inside
of my jacket pockets, and grip hard,
holding us all together like veins raining anarchy
down a viney garden piano wire.
Electrical more like it.  The brash willow tree is covering
its shame, its not dressed just yet and the tall red bricks
of the wall behind it reflects our hardness back,
and our fortitude, for better or worse.
We sit, my story petered out; I wonder
how long we can play like this, before you are too big--
trying to put your hands between my thighs to stay warm,
but told you shouldn't because, well, just don't.
Still, I know you're stay warm with a girl down the street
and you'll be free from all that locks you in, but
for now, while you need to be enveloped in grace
and protection which I cannot always afford myself,
you will always have my arms to hold you in,
and your puppet feet will find their steps
to form the grandest of jail breaks.  You will climb the
willow and shoot into the stars, comanches at your side
and bugs in your hair.  And, I'm glad
that you know,
you can always be a fool with me.    

M. Lucia