A way with words

“You have such a way with words”

She looked up from her side of the library booth.

She can prove him right, and show him how her lips

Carve stanzas about his face pressed into her memory 

As a seal to wax. Tactile, detailed, hungry. Even her hot breathe is articulate in silence — it curls

Into the crisp winter night to punctuate sentences,

Dexterous as fingers, shaping the space between gasps

And sounds through the bite of teeth. Oh she has

A way with words alright. It has been sharpened 

So that when she holds it against the pulse of the enemy 

She has pledged to kill, she will slay the devourer of voices 

Who swallows people’s moans straight from their thirsty lips.

She thinks he has yet to discover that the sweet stain

Of dessert cannot satisfy the deeper hunger stowed in hearts.

He has not learnt that this is a mastery learnt like knife work,

And the dagger that can carve can, too, draw blood.