Self-Portrait on an Evening Where We Almost Kissed

Queer identity in concert means this:
Not knowing and tiptoeing around the subject, when I could have been kissing you.
I’m not sure you would want my skin- more of a cavity then a covering.
I offer instead the long steadied viscera –
A Vanitas of sorts. Dies irae, dies illa. Solvet saeclum in favilla.

We’re back at the art museum, light streaming through the windows.
The suits of armor line the halls, people’s voice slipping through their empty spaces.
We rush through and for a second, I think I am out of my mind in another time.
We bounce laughter off paint and varnish, throw cackles and kisses to the statues.
In one gallery, you stand for a very long time under the artificial lights.

After Orlando, we sat in the library and ate red bean buns,
And afterwards sat on the grass and had sweet cream.
And oh, remember there was going to a requiem for the dead.
A Jew, a catholic and a Buddhist walked into a concert hall,
Sat down and for a moment and let out a moan of collective grief.

We’ve huddled in the museum at the end of the world.
What exactly does the end of the ‘world’ mean?
The end of human existence? Of all living things on this earth?
Why do we presume that because our life has finished, that it will go noticed?
(And through the carefully preserved windows, I hum our almost love song.)

By Dora Levy

Biography:

Dora Levy is a 19-year-old poet, currently studying History of Art and French Language at university. Her work has been published in Vagabond City and other literary magazines. She likes peaches, Hieronymus Bosch paintings, and winter seascapes.