Sugar of Lead

A vine, through a fence
Twists in the light of a distant sun.
You wrapped my hair around a finger, once


There's a way I align my soul,
A way I pose the question
To dilute the meaning.
Because I don't really want to know.

You painted me in slow strokes
It took too long. And I felt pinned,
I ran, I fell, I ripped my skin
On broken shells and hollow smiles
And suspicious offers of tomorrow-days.

I fought my way through a thicket of flies,
Through a cloud of parasites, of thorns
And they consumed me, tasted me, drank me
and it was all wrong.

I swam through the liquid of second guesses
I was crushed under the pressure
of a thousand grasping hands:

I died.

I can't guess the valleys you've seen--
You traveled, too
But after and underneath
The double images, the imprints,
The afterimages that float
As flotsam on your retinas
I'm still there.

You see the world through all you've seen
and I am still the fading afternoon,
I am chlorine. A tanned body
Half-wrapped in a white towel.
I am chocolate birthday cake, leaves
In the pond
That thought on the back of your mind.

And when I feel you,
When you dip into the familiar
Space between you and me,
You walk the bridge
And melt it in the warmth of your breath.

You traced my scars, walked down them slowly,
Deliberately. You foraged for a simpler state.
You broke my sight,
And I, though blind, felt life restored.

But my taste, though sweet, is poison.