Cruel Sunsets by Gabriela Marie Milton
Summer sunsets with their cruel debaucheries of orange and purple. Concentrated scents of saffron and roses in the hallways. Dates filled with marzipan. I crave sweetness like I crave you.
Nightmares. A sailor drowned a cat at sea. Someone paid him to do it.
I cannot breathe anymore.
Last night in one of the upstairs bedrooms the child’s toys changed places. A candle lit by itself.
I do not wish you were here. I am beyond that. My blood flows in the opposite direction. I am the plenitude of my febrilities. I am incandescent.
Remember that scene from Jane Eyre? We discussed. Bertha: beautiful, exotic, insane, locked in a room. Bertha whom Rochester married in Jamaica. Every time he tried to open the door she would rush to tear him apart. Why am I thinking Bertha?
I can see you walking in the streets of another continent. I can hear your murmurs by the sea.
I still cannot breathe.
My darling, “will you still be loving me when the summer is gone?”
Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020
