She looked at the folds on my palm.
She studied the lines
life
love
and madness.
She reached out and touched
the deepening lines on my brow -
she strokes a fingernail beneath the corner of my beard
along the line
from my nose to the corner of my mouth.
"You're tired", she said
and touched the quiet folds within my heart.
My eyes filled with tears.
"Origami" she said.
"You are the picture
of your life's folds,
a creation of bending
and pressing -
you are a tiny origami boat
floating on God's still pond,
and today
I am Basho!"
Contraband Marriage, traveling along the hemline of loving after incarceration, is a love story written in lyric and free form, set in reality with a different ever after.