playing chess with the lights off

playing chess with the lights off

June 22, 2012, 10:58 am
Filed under: Poetry, Writing | Tags: chess, love, love poem, poem, Poetry, taking things slow

i’ve come to understand what you meant

when you said you didn’t want to know me too well.

you cherished the half-shadowed corners of a smile,

the echo of a glance, the ripple of a whisper on midnight

air, the certain dance of hands under blankets, the

soundless language of lips, and the eloquence with which

we spoke it

you didn’t want to turn on the house lights.

but you see, i was never much good at chess. all those

black and white pawns always intimidated me.

they were peaceful strangers at first. then,

all hell breaks loose. next thing you know the

white queen is banging the kingside bishop,

the black king comes out as gay, and an anonymous

rook goes into suicidal depresion. At least,

that’s the way I played it. It was all impulses and

urges. My knights rode on spurs of the moment.

I played careless and never thought out moves ahead.

I’d risk it all for a mate. Hell. I still do. You see,

I never learnt to check myself. I believe that doesn’t

get you anywhere either. But I understand what you

meant now

about the dance.

I want to wait for all the right moments to dip and twirl

you. I want the tempo real slow, at one beat per minute,

so I can dance you a good long while,

until the music fades to silence

and the house lights have dimmed on

and the game is long over

but we

we won’t know it at all.

 

playing chess with the lights off by Alberto Cristoffanini is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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