Annabelle and Eddie by Diane Dehler

Annabelle and Eddie

Annabelle Lee looks for her image in sea water.

A teardrop of blood forms on her full upper lip where she has bitten it.

She feels the sea churning around her bare feet and legs,

“What am I doing here,” she asks.

 

A biting wind howls and tears up the edges of her gauzy black nylon dress.

This dress was an opiate of yours, darling Eddie.

-Black water, black rain, white fingers running up her spine alongside the crypt.

The grave words- words engraved on the heart.

Eddie, what are we doing out here at night, she asks, bewildered by fear and wind.

No answer.

Are we awake or asleep?

Eddie, the sepulchre is cold and I have been sleeping in this black crypt forever.

Yes, I always try to prettify things but still the crypt is dark and I am cold.

My tears seep onto the floor of the vault.

The pool of water rising at my feet begins to fill the tomb with tears of ocean that rise and rise.

At high tide this is how we die.

One minute you are alive and the other you have to live in a tomb forever because a poet

has immortalized you.

And there are no second chances so enjoy it while you can.

You can’t be sorry and you can never go out into the sun again.

It is just a black night of sea; rows of breakers that churn and crash against the mind.

The hellish world where there are only tormented thoughts for company.

Where am I?

Why dead, Annabelle.

I know this by the sound of your crying, Eddie.

You promised nothing would ever separate us, except my white skin.

My death separated us even though your fingers traced a poem on the curve of my lower back writing the words; my Annabelle Lee forever.

Skin is still between us and there are days I regret this.

-Bones, fragments, residual thoughts and nerve tissue; the brain’s repose.

-The erotic breath of love between us.

.

-You lied, Eddie.

We are not one breath.

I am a ghost; a shadow cast by a lunar eclipse.

The prospects of waking up in a tomb and having nowhere to go are dismaying.

Eddie, you encountered me recently at a séance and your lips on mine were electrifying.

I remember your black curls and your hands on my breasts on our way down into the liquid center.

Enter the ocean, the dark angels tell me.

The first thing you do Annabelle...  is you just let go.

You used to feed me black poppies for my pain and now in torment, I long more for your lips.

  

I long for being loved by night.

Kiss me again that I may die.

That the eyes of my soul will close.

Enter me with sheer magnetic force that creates a poem and sets the spirit free.

Rows of breakesr churn and crash against my mind in this hellish crypt where I have only tormented thoughts for company.

Eddie, the crypt is so cold.  

Diane Dehler

First published by Cultural Weekly, June, 2014