The Blade

by Anna Donovan

You call and I sit
unsteady on a hard bar stool,
stare at your back
and hear your words tempered
by grinding sounds
steady on a whetstone.

"I have something for you,"
you say,
and the glint of steel
speaks of gliding on soft flesh,
pliable and nude.

You slice sweet peppers,
hold each deliberate sliver
to my lips
and I know the taut ease
of fingers round
a blue Lace Agate handle.

"I got them from a client
with a baby Grand piano,"
you say, as my blood gathers
in a gush of silence,
"he grows them in a solarium."

And in a glass room I
seize a blind knowledge:

I want the smooth silk dance
on the blade's beveled surface,
the tongue taunting premonitions
gilded and heavy over sharp metal.