A Brief History of Obsession by Sara Femenella I was his wife from the very start. His beauty was my job, duty-bound I swore allegiance, I stayed the first night, then every night. A nightingale with her last drop of blood. In every bed I do everything I should. His beautiful desire is my sundown breaking of the fast. In my mouth I find a golden bowl, in my beard I find an extra half dozen years of life. I press fingerprints onto his glass bottles, I lay my empty womb at his feet along with my braised meats and my silk dresses. I want him to believe in the woman I decorate and dress for him. His beauty the backwards window to my life, his husbandry the judicious use of my body and my time. My lips painted red, my breasts adorned with seashells from the shores of my waiting. My time is nothing less than a echo measuring the fathoms between his body and mine at any given moment. This is about love. This was never about love. Lust is where I still feel his fingers after he is gone. The mercy of a man and his electric fires, what I want him to kiss away. Love is a life washed over by a man’s beauty and the electric fires left in the body. Love is licking what lust leaves behind, the commitment of salt on rocks.
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Here is a brief bio: Sara Femenella’s poems have been published in Pleiades, The Journal, The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, Denver Quarterly, Salamander, The Shore and Seventh Wave, among others. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.
