Love (3)

Love (3)

Leslie Williams

A lamp is burning in an apartment window,
and strings of Christmas lights at 6:30 in the morning: a view
worthwhile for framing you, my someone x inside
simpatico, valorous, keen—most compassionate
to (I’m not proud of) my early catastrophic
openness, Constantinople and Trafalgar and all the jangled
hopes untamed—crowds invited up above the traffic noise,
streetlights, rain-slick nights, an almost empty fridge—O dizzying
vivacities too costly to sustain! You say here, come lay your head
and so renounce the squelching voice that spiraled
through my girlhood: it only matters that you “turn out all right,”
as if a life is nothing more than a presentable
but tasteless cake.
You want for me
a Jubilee, the flaming—

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Leslie Williams
Poet & Spiritual Director

Leslie is the author of two poetry collections, most recently, Even the Dark. Her poems have appeared in Image, America, The Christian Century, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is an Episcopalian in training to become a spiritual director. She lives near Boston. 

Photography by Maria Brauer