for Belizaire
For years he’d leaned against the tree,
staring down at his reflection
in her face, scanning its slender
tapering from cheek bones to chin,
faint pout of lips, the thin straight line
that formed their noses, hint of sun
glancing off their rounded foreheads,
dark brows arching over almond eyes,
hers kept focused on the painter,
his, bent with yearning that she might
turn and find in his darkened face
the mirror of her own white self.
Someone must have feared that she would
turn, stare back, see herself in him,
or, that others might see their
common coinage, see a yearning
of blood for blood, so, the sky expanded,
pigment and brush forming a shroud
of thick clouds to blot him out,
as fever had extinguished her
before she had the chance to see
her own sweet magnolia blossom
in the rich walnut of his skin.