The Beautiful Nobody (Requiem for Noureev)

By Eric Dunham

i

On a silken showered April spring morning—

From the sill the rain painted dark smears on cobblestone,

Between pitter and patter I heard your ghost roaming the old hallways.

We would stargaze on cloudy nights when the sky looked like a character study of you, 

And now wet angels cascaded from it and I wondered how many of them bore your name. 

You were the crepe myrtles bobbing in the wet air,

A purple and green smattering of colour over the dull courtyard, 

Lilacs wilting under the weight of little pools gurgling in the petals—

The last time I saw your face the veins bulged from your forehead and 

You looked just like one of those leaves across from me, drooping and spilling, 

Twitching like fingers awakening a statue.

Or fingers plucking the metal strings of the neck, chords playing between pink sheets,

A lethal fibonacci sequence spiralling through each blood vessel.

But by that point your skin was already frail and branded by sarcoma hickeys
Like bruised, uneaten peaches left out on a languid summer afternoon. 

ii

On the street goblets dribbled from the umbrella claws, 

An army of wiry spectres with open arms, 

The lamps bled orange flecks overtop the ripples

And the dusk’s affairs sank the silt down to the riverbed. 

A wreath of white gulls ebbed around an empty stretch of air

And in the evening light the flock turned into glowing vultures over the water.

A cinnamon, earthen stench rose and curled around my skin,

Detached ropes of sunlight escaped through clouds and danced underneath the surface. 

The Seine flows less at hours like this but still aches in the wind. 

Are you being scavenged on by time? 

iii

Last night I tried to dance just like you when Lizzy sang from my cassettes.

The candlelight cast two parallel figures on my rose sanctuary wall.

My hands crossed over each other and their shadows came to life—

I felt my fingers burning but it was just the air above the flame, so alone I was again. 

I seem to be eternally tattooed by the chipped nail polish you complained about—

Did you know technicolour brilliance is better than what is found in mottled lacquer? 

Does our writhing pleasure still live on? Why does a flower have the courage to blossom in rain?

To answer that I think of your persimmon pudding, 

Blackberry stained fingers on those humid Virginia days,

Our palms were pollinated by turmeric over a hot stove,

How we would huddle on the swinging chair on the porch when storms rolled in,

You would call your family across the ocean but not tell them of your malaise—

You had icicles for fingers in your hospital bed, my new mattress stays unworn on your side,

I fear the sun still sets, and I cannot bear to stencil the shape of your nobody.