LOVE Poem: Elegies to these Applicants of Love, by Bella Devine

I did not want to converse with your ashes
A result of your index finger of defense on the shooting barrel.
Your body deflecting the light of the early morning fog,
The sun.
Ricocheting on your beige monochromatic static expression.
Staring at nothing.
And the blue aryan of your eye, the only glittering coat of life.

No more of your butterfly wings,
your laughter—
only the filth of mud in your fingernails
inertia in your hand,
still gripping the Holy Bible
I gifted upon your soul.
The psalms your lustful clench casted away,
the last thing you prayed.
Unfaithfully.

But now I–
speak to your ashes in an unconventional face and gaze
a premature metaphor-ordained death
but there is no voice.
Not from me or you,
Despite your face coming through and blood pumping out of you.

So I faithfully stand at the telephone booth,
wasted all my Sunday church coins trying to squeeze vowels out of you,
choking you. Turning. You. Blue.
(Heavenly father disapproved—said that wasn’t proverbial of me)

So I try at home, and voicemail is all I know of you.
Go. fuck. you.
I meant, sorry. Go. forgive. Yourself.
Or Forgive. me.
Now that the telephone cable is clothing my neck
in the spread of your Holy Ghost
round the city’s face.

—

But your voicemail preludes Gods,
and he’s the only one that softly,
madly talks,
filling the puzzle of you.
Sanctifying my intestines,
Wrapping my hands in rosaries,
restoring the lustful grip of yours
washing my typewriter and me
while I call
and call
and call
to the one that was you