C. Shawn Brown - Honorable Mention

Making Love With Our Bones

1.
I fool myself into believing
that this girl, this little bit of a girl
who walks past me every morning
is someone who I recognize.

Each morning she passes by
and I recognize her from before-

2.
This is a never-ending dance
between lovers.

I want to scream out to her,
“We make love with our bones,”
I would say, “We live and breathe
in this seasonal place, but we make love with our bones.”

3.
Afterwards, I smell the rain
and the thunderhead that builds
around us.

She cannot smell the moisture
purging itself from the air:

this conglomeration of tears and mist,
          of lovers
          of lovers gone
          and of lovers to come,
when even the smell of rain
is the only thing that remains.

I wonder
if I can reteach a thing tenderness.

4.
Or something other than death.
Something at least.

Not just the caressing
          of flesh,
not only the mingling of forms,
but the flame that licks and envelops us;
not only the touch,
but the smell of bones
turning to ash, and later, to dust.

5.
Think,
though it seem a difficult task,
I can reteach a thing tenderness:

to smell the rain before it comes
and fear nothing,
to smell the storm’s climactic approach
and know that it too cannot undo
the tormenting past,
or future.

6.
Together again
we approach
the bed of our ancestors
as the smell of rain advances
and reels again and again,-
not relenting to the flame,
simply accepting
that we,
we,
lovers consumed by the ash and the dust
of the flame,
throughout time,

dance, as the past and the future
dance, not knowing the difference,
making love with our bones.

C. Shawn Brown served five years in the U.S. Army then earned a BA in English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He has been writing poetry and short stories for six years. He's been published in Jump! magazine, and is now a student at The Portfolio Center in Atlanta for copywriting.