Two Poems – Writers House Review

Brooke Simmons

Diamond Eyes

Yours are 14 carat piercings in my heart

I trace your shadow with gold

Dipped lines and draw your

Name on my notebooks in gemstone curls

Your radiance spreads like a

Brilliant fire in my mind

Sparks and sapphire rain take me out to

Dinner where

Your smile is

Gourmet and your laugh fills my chest with

Treasure

Your embrace is chocolate and

Melts me into the decadence of your

Love

I lay on a silver platter for you

Diamond eyes

I need a map, I get lost in them

And somehow I don’t

I could find you anywhere and

Get found in your precious arms

You are a crowning jewel and I am

An aficionado made to adore you

I hold your hand like a shell holds a

pearl. So tender is my love for you a thousand

moons could not dim the sweet luminescence that your

heart beams into me

We Threw Away the Furniture

The stained, torn couch. The musted brown rug. Collected crumbs and whatever else it could store.

She was an antique shop.

Hoarding and boarding, holding memories until they dried up and had to be sold

half off. Discount taken at the heart.

We threw all the crap out, ripped up the carpet and rearranged the chairs. Even bought a new tv, distraction emitted happiness.

But I couldn’t throw you away. Your scent was gone and yet you still linger. And when I go down there I see you on that couch. Its like an illusion

A delusion

“It was years ago”

And yet you still put up shop in my head. You live rent free in my basement like the paint on the wall. We repainted by the way, its green now.

The couch is gone, you’re gone and yet your memory is still down there. It lingers like the 808s you made me listen to when you pressed for that toxic

osculation

and my dignity is still stamped into the concrete floor. Disappearing under fluorescent bathroom lights and turned locks. In the mirror I watched her go and

red circles moved in like a new contact prescription

I was there when the men put the new couch in. Taupe and optimistic. Mocking me with

Inexperience

She doesn’t know

But I remember.

Brooke Simmons is a junior from Old Bridge, NJ, double majoring in marketing and English. She is is the Vice President of the Glamour Gals here at Rutgers and is a Student Ambassador at Rutgers Business School.