“Make You Whole” by Jose Vilson © 2009

She gives him a look of absent fatalism
Welds streams of release through her face’s fine crevices
Blood surfaces just below her epidermis
Flushing away the transparencies of her tears and her emotions
She’s flawless,
Nicks and bruises all along her curvatures
Willing to walk into whirlwinds
Chairs, desks, knives, shovels, and scales abound
Cumulus clouds cross paths with the sun
Like sweaty hands trying to read each others’ comfort level
Feeling the grooves left by age, DNA, and the unhanded gifts
They still reach out to
As they walk past obstacles which, alone, you dare not tread
Agita brews anger in a cold serving of reality
Unbeknown to them mutually
Rewrites scripts, flips presents to rifts
Makes heart-shaped holes, revealing only flesh and bone
Misplaced cordate organs,
Somewhere hidden under our guts
Out of position, they’re clinging to their voiceboxes
Contort our uncomfortable faces
Screams out to their memories,
Where this pain only distorts its echoes
All the while, two lovers suffer insufferably
Others glaze on the new dense air around them
One closes his eyes, takes a deep breath
Unhinges the entanglements in his stomach
And says simply, “I love you.”
She tightens her lip,
Swings her neck, fighting through a non-existent wind current
Looks deeply into his piercing eyes
With the look of a million women
Who symbolized perfection at any innumerable moments for a million more men
Repeats her faults in order
Frustrations in reverse
She gives a look of absent fatalism
She pauses.
Content with the reply, she repeats his vow of love
She’s content with him, connected with his soul
“Just forget your shortcomings, baby. You make me whole …”

Jose, who came from the heart …