Love Poem: The Succinct Hem
Melissa Schwartz Avatar
Written by: Melissa Schwartz

The Succinct Hem

Drudgery beckoned,
between starched linens 
and mango colored fingernails
ripping, tearing, the rent fabric to
blissful shreds of compliance.
He needed nothing but his own 
smile
dancing nightly with vice and
tremors and all the things she 
craved but refused herself.
Until one night,
when followed by her 
conscience
up to the painted boudoir of  
fragmented portraits,
she fled 
Fate,
arranged between strangers 
on a reckoning 
of blunders,
and found the reflection 
she needed most
to obey.