The Waiting Time

By Alejandre Lamas-Nemec

Inspired by “Edith Piaf & Amolia,” Photographed by Allan Grant

i know you 

as if your watered eyes had bore 

into my own, read myself to filth 

till crumpled bone a disgust, 

were all that my wreathing form 

could seep out its pores 

you’ve felt that 

water in your lungs 

as if the only thing to keep from 

the drowning—like a humming through the muscle, gifting you to only see the past— where, to open your mouth 

and sing, 

and the singing was the praying; 

we don’t know where this world will go and we may never discover why 

we were placed here 

but we are singing 

and the water 

in your larynx, choking you till the tears turn to the red hot life of you 

you learned, as we all learn, 

the only way to stomp out of hell 

is the singing 

when the world grants us 

hateful shades, we sing through it 

when we contort, hiding from the devil’s eye, we sing to it, when the evil soaks 

into our mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers we will sing to them 

and as we sing 

to them, sing to me, as our time 

and lives collide to mean: freedom is singing, her words deeply desired; we are singing to the world 

because I know you 

you lie in the waiting time 

and i lie with you