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NEWBORN
When you first pick her upshe is so much smallerthan you had imagined,fitting comfortably into the crookof an elbow, your handunder her knees.She raises a thin armand stares into andthen through youwith navy blue eyesthat you carry awayin your dreams.She is not fragile,that is the wrong wordfor her size beliesa strength she shareswith you, a…
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FIRST LOVE
The morning that I first loved youwas not the morning of the daythat I first told you that I loved you,fear needed a space to bridgeand an ocean served it well.It was not following the dayI first met you, saw you smile,heard you laugh, or perhapsit was and I didn’t notice.It was not the day…
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A FADED PHOTO
They stood side-by-sideas if frozen, adjacent butnot touching, two dollswhose hands were incapable of movement.They are expressionless, neitherstoic nor smiling as though the photographerwiped their faces free of expression.Grant Wood might have painted them,named his work Lithuanian Gothic.I want so to see the people behindthese facades, but I knowthat in 1934 a photograph wasa production,…
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HOW MANY
The better question, the onefor which there can beno real answer, ishow many couples of our agewould be together today,would never have gotten together,if we had cell phonesand tablets when we were young.The use of that word alonestrongly hints at whatI imagine that answer to be.A telephone, landlinethey now call it, required presence,required you to…
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RECENT MEMORIES
Looking through your wedding albumtwenty years after a midlife marriageyou are quickly awash in emotions.There is the joy of the moment, magnifiedduring the succeeding years, andthe rekindled memories of peopleand moments of the day forgottenor lost in the tumult that is attendanton any wedding, first or second.But there is a deep sadness as well,at those…
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IN THE CITY OF DREAMS
my demonssink into the abyssof memoryand drownin the hollowbetween her breasts,she touches my armand presses backwe are Siamese fetusesfloating untetheredin the sea of night,I can smell the sweet soapand taste the sweatbeading on hershoulder blades,I brush my fingersacross her thighand cling to sleep. First published in Discretionary Love, June 2023https://www.discretionarylove.com/in-the-city-of-dreams-louis-faber/
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THEY SAID
She said, “If youhave something to sayjust say it.”He said, “I already did,I said it all.”She said, “Saysomething else, then.”He said, “I havenothing else to say,it has allbeen said already.”She said, “Thatis the problemwith you,you never wantto talk aboutthings I want.”He said, “I do haveone more thingI must say to you –Goodbye.”
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THAT SUMMER
That summer was onehe would always remember.She was special, she told him soand he had no reasonto doubt her. Thatand he was one to fallso easily into whathe thought was love.It lasted well into August,when she said it was over.He did not understand whybut he was not one to argueso he consigned herto a memory…
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FAMILY
Of the few remaining cousins, nowas old as I, a number we do not mentionor want to believe that he was her onlylover, as though she was the young girlwho left Charleston for Washington, D.C.They cite, as justifying empirical evidence,that she never married, alwaysthe beloved aunt, nothing more allowed.My later discovered existencelaid waste to their…
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A QUICKLY PASSING SEASON
That summer was onehe would always remember.She was special, she told him soand he had no reasonto doubt her. Thatand he was one to fallso easily into whathe thought was love.It lasted well into Augustwhen she said it was over.He did not understand whybut he was not one to argueso he consigned herto a memory…
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an old writer and his words 