Love Poem: The Imagination of Fear When Playing Bonnie and Clyde.
Jeanmarie Marchese Avatar
Written by: Jeanmarie Marchese

The Imagination of Fear When Playing Bonnie and Clyde.

We stood there, back to back, creating shadows in rooms the sun

dared.not.touch.


I could see eyes racing through breath and life stalled herself, time equated minutes with
the way my knees shook, and I counted the blinking that occurred when I waited


to hear him speak.


His hand reached, my fingers placed themselves between his grasp, and I thought how
wonderful it was I had my nails painted, how pretty my hold on tomorrow appeared when you
couldn't see the sweat that sat on my palms...


The air was thick that day, sticky with the idea of summer and humid with the possibility
of June, my curls tightened in the damp atmosphere that circled us and I wondered why...


(if we were so in love)


we refused to look at one another.


Pretty words often cloud reality, and we stood in the middle of a storm that had started
off beautiful, the darkness surrounded my waist and crept up my neck as I wished it was
his touch, dancing across my skin, on the Sundays he had smiled down at me, on the days he
claimed me beautiful and the afternoons we had made love.


“We'll fight this,” he whispered over his shoulder as his breath crawled into my left ear,
and I wore white, a skirt that stuck to my thighs, so that my form would be desirable, I
silently begged him to look at me, I bit my lip and thought that there was no way out if
he didn't turn around.


Low~cut and desperate, I took hold of the denim that created belt loops on the back of his
jeans, I fumbled for a pocket to place a love note in, I searched for the words to write
that would heal us, I studied the explanations that scattered themselves through my brain
and decided he needed to stop protecting me and...

turn...


“Look behind you, Dear,” I begged, as my legs fought the need to run, “look behind you and
capture me.”

“I am,” he replied, “but your eyes are closed and I can't see my reflection in you anymore.”


I could hear his breath catch, his decided desperation, and the way my teeth clicked when
I became scared, I felt my lashes, the black painted cage for my tears, how frightened I
was to open them and how determined I was to...

fight.


He kissed me then, brushed his lips across my parted mouth, and upon the blinking release
that flooded ages ago down my heated, flushed cheeks, I saw him, standing, in a room that
the sun had attacked, his shadow crossing the floor, his hand...

touching mine,

and my back...

against the wall.