Scott Blackwell

In a Word

Your name –

If a single word was capable of describing you
    to me
It was that one.

If one word was capable of encapsulating you,
Of distilling everything you became to me,
    everything
You awakened in me, everything I thought
Was dead in me

It was the simple plangent sound of your name.

Exotic as you were – in French, to want.
Forget Shakespeare, everything was there.

It descended like a harbinger of good news and
    bad.
It became synonymous with you – with me – the 
    part of me
That bloomed before you in sudden recognition.

Weaving through my skin like a monogram, blood red
    and
Sharp as a needle, were three small syllables, 
Each gilding my own singular iron brand;
A rubric
Engraved in darker metal, eponymous
Wide-open characters, a code that once seemed
So simple to crack;
The standard that constantly waved beside you, that
    tangled
In the last remnants of you, 
Fading one
By one,

Until only that word remained.

______

Scott  Blackwell graduated from the San Francisco Art Insitute in 1997. He currently lives and teaches in Illinois.