A Dirge for Suzette

I knew a girl with a clutching embrace,

silky hands, and demons.  

She’d had an endowment, 

a mother’s anguished love.

She'd had the clap, and hepatitis at fourteen.

She’d charmed the world with her tulips.

her smiles--and the pistol in her purse.

I flew to her flames, then drowned in the

desperation of her numbered days.

And now she lingers in her rapture, in

eternal gardens, in solemn grandeur,

in the recesses of her solitude, in the

confines of her sunken fortress.

She does not sense the sun-drenched

landscapes or the Pacific sprays.

She knows only her immutable silence:

the tiara she wears on her brow, a

parchment with a poem rolled, tied,

and fell from her hand.

She is dressed in taffeta and does not dream

of escape. Nor will she ever.