happiness is the tenacious lover in the parchment margins

this edge of the world has mellowed into sand

and she doesn’t know when the millennium started

or who exactly she is

just that she has never died

she has had every lover there is to have

every enemy there is to fluster

she has sisters and daughters

and men who tell her what she can and can’t be

call her what makes them most comfortable

she waltzes flush to their flesh

and they drink her to life in the shyness of dark

she doesn’t mind so long as she’s alive

dancing in frills and emerald with one

painting love in black oiled sable with another

dusting neglect from the strings of lonely instruments

resting her head against a warm freckled shoulder 

young and worn like nervous drafted pages

she always leaves kisses along those taupe marks

always touches them tenderly

she is the cherry blush of their childhood memories

tilting their lips into summer spring smiles

the gold lining of dreams and the fondness in new unity

she is singing canary sweet in a candlelit study 

urging lover three thousand to bind the parchment pages

spread the parchment pages

offer the parchment pages to open roseate palms

lover three thousand does so and she draws close and travels away

travels by those hands and the new bursts of her

and she is born again to the new millennium

where she has yet to know everything and she has yet to mind because

despite the gray lull of the weeping waves

despite the crumble of structure into sand

despite the end of dances and the fleeting flashes of loss

happiness is alive

MURLEVE ROBERTS

“Inspired by Little Women, but also just the emotion of happiness.”