Delovely

Deliriously in love, we debased ourselves,
fishnet stockings and public proclamations.

I flaunted my décolletage and thought my
thoughts in decasyllables. It was disgusting.

Once the affair was given some air, decanted,
he is still debonair, by default. We are denizens

of a society we enlisted in, even once
our worst defects, those bedeviling deerticks,

were declassified. You thought I’d mention
the deathrattle, two desperados at the depot,

on the way to detox, dividends depreciating,
the helium high deflating, flaccid. But no.

We chose détente. Not worthy, per se, of
everlasting devotional, but not despoiled either,

not at all. A demotic love to withstand the dew.
A dessert course with sweetness to last and last.

Erika Jo Brown is the author of I’m Your Huckleberry and co-editor of Beatrice Hastings: On the Life & Work of a Lost Modern Master. She is a PhD student in creative writing and literature at the University of Houston, and works as a writing fellow at the MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital.