Aubade by Robin Coste Lewis

Aubade

 

All night, my psyche comforts itself

with you. It delights in watching your body

 

travel through landscapes so lush even the bidet

is painted with twisting gouache flowers.

 

They frame a lady who rides an elephant,

while a gentleman stands holding up a lotus

 

toward her saddle. Then we are in a city, climbing

up a brownstone into the home of people you love.

 

I step behind you, smiling quietly into our bodies’

clement warmth. Except, instead of the usual deflecting

 

skirt, in my dream I’ve dressed you in mildly tailored

pants. Next, we are in a building, in a bazaar, in

 

a city inhabited by people subtle and endless

shades of a dark cinnamon. We walk through

 

room after room, then stop when we come

across two leather chairs with frames

 

carved from mangrove and mahogany.

The goatskin is dyed so red the color sprints

 

back and forth across that thin, thin line

between very elegant and exquisitely tacky.

 

We take both. Caramel and beige,

we are the whitest things around.

 

The shopkeepers greet us with a fondness

and familiarity that is also historical apology.

 

But we look back through our bodies completely

pleased by what—for millennia—the cell has seen

 

and done—and sustained. Something between us

refuses pity, because, of all the ancient masks

 

hanging from these walls, we are

the only two still walking and talking.*

Aubade

 

All night, my psyche comforts itself

with you. It delights in watching your body

 

travel through landscapes so lush even the bidet

is painted with twisting gouache flowers.

 

They frame a lady who rides an elephant,

while a gentleman stands holding up a lotus

 

toward her saddle. Then we are in a city, climbing

up a brownstone into the home of people you love.

 

I step behind you, smiling quietly into our bodies’

clement warmth. Except, instead of the usual deflecting

 

skirt, in my dream I’ve dressed you in mildly tailored

pants. Next, we are in a building, in a bazaar, in

 

a city inhabited by people subtle and endless

shades of a dark cinnamon. We walk through

 

room after room, then stop when we come

across two leather chairs with frames

 

carved from mangrove and mahogany.

The goatskin is dyed so red the color sprints

 

back and forth across that thin, thin line

between very elegant and exquisitely tacky.

 

We take both. Caramel and beige,

we are the whitest things around.

 

The shopkeepers greet us with a fondness

and familiarity that is also historical apology.

 

But we look back through our bodies completely

pleased by what—for millennia—the cell has seen

 

and done—and sustained. Something between us

refuses pity, because, of all the ancient masks

 

hanging from these walls, we are

the only two still walking and talking.