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Sestina
by Elena
M. Castorena Murphy
The table is set
and you fuss about tracked sand.
How
they never
care if the ground they march
is clean, "they" smirk in the
background.
I notice you pale.
Feigning a smile so pale
that time
is reset.
The mise-en-scene turns background.
Imprints in
sand
lingering past March
on a beach where people never
go, but you
never
go beyond that pale,
impressing March.
A dead movie
set
littered with sand,
overwhelmed by its own background.
You are
the background.
You will never
be the sand
fixed in my pail
as if it
were set
like a jewel or a day in March.
Passing time in March
a
cold sting in the background.
Waves pull at the sun chanting 'Set!
Set!'.
Now I can never
add to the congregation of shells in my pail.
I
write your name in the sand.
My cut feet impress the sand,
the path I
march
marked with blood. A pale
stain left in the hatchback,
ground
into the upholstery where it can never
be entirely removed, the
stain is set.
Hard set in cemented sand
You, eternally pale. You, the
background
to a never relinquishing March.
