DAVID

By I.S. Jones

I loved you when I was a child
and so, my love for you was childish.
For nine lifetimes, you’ve haunted my dreams.

Nine lifetimes of finding me in the tender hours
that hang low enough to touch.
Which doesn’t help ease me to sleep.

You marked in memory: lips—overwrought
of sweetness, mouth like a too worn,
kicked-in fence. Green eyes pursuing me

through the years. So quiet your lashes against my breast,
I could mistake you for faith. Zora says it’s useless
to justify desire, and so, dawn betrays me to sunlight.

I say I have no use for nostalgia and still, you return,
not as the man you are now but as the boy, I loved at 16, at 17.
Knowing nothing of love then, I understood devotion

but not who was worthy of it. All my life,
so much of the grace I gave at the cost of grace for myself.
We could have wasted the hours in a heady field of spring,

called it a marriage. Maybe all childish love is the fleeting light
I will never touch again. In the dark, I bite you with my softest teeth.

BIO:
I.S. Jones received her MFA in Poetry at UW–Madison. She is an instructor with Brooklyn Poets. Her chapbook Spells of My Name (2021) was selected by Newfound for their Emerging Poets Series. She is the 2023 Bread Loaf Rona-Jaffe Scholar in Poetry.

Twitter & IG handles: @isjonespoetry