Meet Me in the Fire-Eater’s Tent

This speaks to the complexity of passion that exists in shadow, how sometimes the people we can’t name out loud are the ones who never leave us.

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I arrive like the last note of a circus tune no one remembers dancing to,

all whirl and whisper, pressed velvet shoulders brushing dust from chandeliered rooms,

a name someone repeats too slowly, as if tasting it for the first time and finding it skewed.

They do not ask where I’ve been because they think I never left,

a tilt of memory that favours the heroic, never the hush,

but I know what I am, a shadow in brocade, the tumble behind a tale that should have ended.

He met me in the fire-eater’s tent, all sharp eyes and soft hands,

a danger sewn into his sleeves, a sweetness too laced with risk to survive daylight,

and we loved like tightrope walkers who never planned to reach the other side.

Even now, when I smile across pewter goblets and half-formed speeches,

I feel him in the warp of the room,

the one piece still slightly off.

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