MIDNIGHT FALAFELS

It was late in the novel when she arrived, added
her Medusa to the chapter on apparitions, asked
if he still made midnight falafels for lost souls.

She is the one he used to sing for when summers
were unbearably heavy with fruit, so many plums
and cherries that the birds needn't argue.
Those Julys when she'd slip her nightgown off,
reveal the geometric marvels the noon sun made,
traces of pomegranate juice on her bottom lip.

After their first affair she'd gone off to be
a gypsy in Africa, was captured by slave traders
north of Marrakech, men who took her to the old
pink city, the square of Jemaa I-Fna, where she
was pinched and tested in the shaded tents.
The day she stood again in his open doorway she
had bluebells woven in her long dark hair, as if
a thousand unwanted kisses had brought her
back to the soul's undeniable purity. That night
he made falafels, her favourite, tahini and yogurt
dripped over the ground meal. Their love deep red,
swollen as the sun on the water at Spanish Banks.

For two years they were consumed, believing lovers
could tunnel their way to paradise, their story
a scent under their fingernails. Last April she left
to join the circus, Cuban lion tamer in Miami
promising to teach her how to handle the big cats.
In the end it was the snakes she learned about,
snakes and alligators, and the marks the jellyfish
leave behind when they kiss you. Medusa at his door
as he wrote of energy taking diaphanous form
in the cornfields, orphaned angels who leave negligees
floating in the chalkened meadows of the moon.

It was almost midnight. For eleven years now it had been
almost midnight. He turned on the stove, set the mortar
and pestle on the table. She was hungry again.

DL