can you tenderly touch your face,
drag the pads of your fingertips
across the slants & dips & ridges,
and learn to say i love you?
can you relieve the arid bite
settling in your mouth--- rid of the cactus
leaves pricking the insides of your cheeks
& the drawl of your forgotten dreams?
can you leave him behind?
the one with the sour, droopy eyes,
who you never could tell
what you really wanted to say?
could never let yourself communicate with,
because of the weeds erupting down your throat?
your brain is rotting like lungs
buried in the summer-drenched air, can't you tell?
like the saints that have crumbled & chipped
away from too much time lost.
you've still got the bitter taste of all those
years past steeped into the cervices of
your constricted, horribly constructed chest,
and you've turn away, away, away.
and he used to say everything right---
he was stitched together from the loving hands
of patient muses & doting aphrodite,
but he flew & flew, too close to the heat,
and you still stayed silent,
because you didn't even know what
you were, who you were, who you wanted to be,
who you were truly in love with.
him or the idealized, sun-soaked version of him?
the pieces of you are thrown together
haphazardly, caught in the bruising hold
of hurricanes & heartache.
tell me, before you think of him
again, before you lose yourself again,
who are you?
