My Love, I am Waiting

for Edgar Allan Poe

"To be awake is to be available to torment, and this is the full, complete meaning of life." - Patrick McGrath

I have always felt
that I knew your face
for I have known the torture
dancing in your eyes
the thin line of sanity
of your pursed lips

on a dark and rainy night
a companion once read me
a story
she had lit the white tapered candles

every time your heart beat
louder
louder
in agonizing terror
I cowered in fright
yet knew you were the one for me

for that same cowering, trembling
stupor was mine
the way you spoke so correctly
of the burn of the wrong

when you walled up
poor Fortunato
stone by stone
in those divine catacombs
in your black roquelaire
I wished it was you and I
entombed together

oh my love
when I look upon your face
it saddens me
we might have sat in darkened,
dusty rooms of velvet wallpaper
sipping absinthe
inventing a world of unreality
to protect us from life's cold realities

but you were born and died
before the breath of life
could be issued into this corpse
of a woman

and don't ever tell
but I was the one who left
the roses and the cognac
as I waited in my black lace veil
running my satin-gloved fingers
over the grimy, cold stone

and now I open the ring
spill its contents into
the amber liquid

and wait for Death
your virtuosity
your opus

to entomb us back
together again