Come Away With Me

Come Away With Me

She whispers, her thin lips barely touching my own.
Above us the sun radiates the way my father’s father always said it would—
around the corners and over the bends of too few clouds.
My eyes can only take so much.

I close them and try to answer all the questions ever asked.Ten angels can pass through the eye of a needle.
We are the descendents of promiscuous dust mites.
There is life on other planets—but none worth looking for.
I open my eyes; she is there again.

Come away with me,
she says once more, her eyes meeting mine,
mumbling words her lips can’t form.
What’s the over/under? I ask.
She shakes her head and I look away.

Across the street from where I lie,
mosquitoes swarm, but they are men
in search of nectar and wish me no harm.
A boy sits, his back resting against an ash.
Is this heaven? he asks in a voice like a thousand muted drums.

I’m not sure, I tell him.
He stares at me, his left hand cupped to his left ear,
watching my serpentine words try to cross the street
and pass through the blanket of mosquitoes that surrounds him.
I’m not sure, I say again.

A solitary mosquito separates from the pack
and floats toward me reaching her six arms out to still my lips.
Come, she whispers, as she thrusts her proboscis deep into my skin 

and flaps her angelic wings.
Come away with me.


-Alexander J. Theoharides