Poem of an Unfinished Story by Ennis Rook Bashe
this just became a play about
one girl walking down a staircase
an insistent dogged love
a deep, rich, almost chocolaty spice.
scent of bread from the bakery down the street
this sunbeam in the form of a blue moon girl
face flushing so vividly that she could have boiled water for tea
draping herself in the tablecloth
breasts like spring apricots, tawny-tipped with just the slightest flush
“unkempt and ill-used as I am, perhaps you could paint me”
gesture after gesture
to watch her move.
“It is made of lines from a story I trashed due to feeling that it didn't have enough of a plot to be worth finishing. However, I wanted to take some of the lines from the piece and give them new life; hence, this poem.”
Ennis Bashe is a queer romance novelist and poet with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Cricket, and Liminality Magazine. Their debut chapbook, Glitter Blood, was an Elgin Award nominee. Find them at https://www.ennisrookbashe.com/ or on Twitter at @rookthebird.