Growing Season
It is his body singing what she hears waking,
rolling over to the empty space,
her sadness stretching silently — that song —
taking itself into shadows under the chifforobe
and behind the closet doors,
veining the floors and her unmoving,
holding only firmer through the seasons
and planets spinning, the drawing moon.
It gets harder to leave this bed,
trail its visions into the world where melt is coming;
the icicles are dropping, driving daggers through the snow,
through the foreheads of every man passing.
She prefers this loving to that breaking,
this stretched out, taut, and aching;
crocus rage is teething gently up through frost,
lavender as bruises or open mouths, not asking
as they feather the wet and warming skies:
it isn’t guile, just coming out the other side.
One morning soon, she will kiss his lips,
then gouge — like rain — his eyes.