“Blue Room”

a poem by David Estringel

Nights
are hardest to bear,
alone,
atop these unwashed sheets
that smell of us, still,
crinkled and heavy
with ghosts
of you and me—
our sweat
and loving juices.
I am tethered
to flashes of smiles
and kisses
that linger
beneath the sweetness
of heated exhales.
To smell your breath,
again,
and taste you
on the back of my tongue.
To pull you
into me
by the small of your back
and sink
into the warmth of white musk–
a tangle of tongues,
fingers,
and limbs.
To have you—
know you—
again,
inside
and out
is all I want.
Need.
Laying here,
drowning
in us,
my legs brush against the cold
rustle of sheets
you left behind,
cutting the airlessness of this room.
Rolling over,
I close my eyes
and sink my face into the depths
of your pillow,
escaping the void
that even silence’s ring has forgotten,
and take you
in,
drowning
in the moving pictures of our silent film,
this lover’s kaddish.
The scent of your hair—
blue fig and oranges—
and spit,
are but pebbles on the gravestone.

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David Estringel is an avid reader, poet, and writer of fiction, creative non-fiction, & essays. His work has been accepted and/or published by Specter Magazine, Literary Juice, Foliate Oak Magazine, Indiana Review, Terror House Magazine, Expat Press, 50 Haikus, littledeathlit, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Route 7, Setu Bilingual Journal, Paper Trains, The Elixir Magazine, Soft Cartel, Harbinger Asylum, Briars Lit, Open Arts Forum, Cajun Mutt Press, and The Good Men Project. He is currently a Contributing Editor (fiction) at Red Fez, editor/columnist at The Good Men Project, and an editor/writer at The Elixir Magazine. David can be found on Twitter (@The_Booky_Man) and his blog “The Booky Man” at thebookyman.wordpress.com.