You're heavy liquor
I'm nothing but a chaser
I'm catching you like rain drops
But when you are inside me,
You are hail
I feel the sharp sting of your words
They roar like thunder behind your teeth
Deep inside my chest you anchored a year-old
"I love you" & I can't seem to spit it out
It hangs over me...
You hang over me
Like the bee that sensed the flower
It was easy for you to take what you needed
And now there's less of me
I've spent months building storm shelters
to escape the abrupt reality of you
But you've torn through every one
You shatter steel walls like thin glass
You pull me in and I brace for impact
My heart floats and falls in your flood
You push my hair out of my face
And I know this isn't where I should be tonight
But you've knocked down trees on every street
That leads to my sanity so I let them in again...
Your butterflies with spikes hidden in their wings

Your eye
is the single thing.

I will fill it
with summer weeds
little stalks
no wrinkles
weighed with rain, like lungs of June.

I will fill it
with the hush of grass
swollen
with sun
your quiet lips like prayers, on my tongue.

You must never meet
puckered soil
wasted stems
no sickness
in this summer age.

Your eye will never fill
with these
trembling
wringing hands--
this ceiling without a star.

I will care for you.