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