Root;

To be a woman is to
be the tree in a perpetual
flash of all seasons
condensed into a rhythmic month

she blossoms into shy fertility
shaking the last remnants of bitterness
from outstretched branches
and delicate buds

Then the wind of
deadening winter returns
stripping tender bark,
she bleeds
multi-colored leaves
cracked and shattered
among frozen blades
leaving
bone and spine and

exposed root.

Inundate;

She's crying. It's 5 in the morning and she's rolled onto her side, curled like the pale crescent of a moon against a sky of blue and green spotted sheets. It's 5 in the morning and she hardly shook the last remnants of sleep and half remembered dreams from her mind before accepting that this is her fault.

And the knowledge courses through her veins, a cunning virus, malicious and intent. She exhales slow and defeated, like she means for it to be the last.

Maybe if she presses the palms of her hands against her eyes hard enough, the purples and reds that stream against the back of her eyelids will pull her into their depths. Then she could forget the you-should-have-known-betters and i-told-you-so's of everyone around her, feign ignorance, perhaps pretend they didn't exist at all.

Because it is guilt that weighs heaviest on a human body and those who say otherwise haven't lived enough to know it yet. 

Come one, come all, but come to me;

I am ashamed. 

I am ashamed and unable to assuage

this sense of personal calamity,

intentional invasion, ambush

of my more tender hidden places

And I fold upon myself

like the legs of a newborn baby,

the thunderous ache in my chest

reminding me of the barrenness,

the desert that is my body 

But she is the rain forest,

ignorant in her saturation,

thankless of water, of life

perhaps never feeling at all

the very things my wilting insides

thirst for so deeply

And so her fertile land will receive the rain

and I can only pray 

for some small mirage

to play upon my scarred surface, 

distracting my parched expanse

from the caustic sun above

Extraneous;

She is the delicate woman
tapping fingers against a park bench
waiting for the man that is not coming
(the man that never comes)
perhaps swept away by a persuasive wind
in the form of a dark haired lady

And maybe she's never seen a sunset
as anything but another dying something
bleeding across the sky
begging for night to appease the
torturous wanting, unwanting
of an expiring day

Her art became the scrutiny of spaces
between a man's every blink and breath
trying to taste the discrepensies in
the things that keep him alive
searching for validation on the inside
of dilated veins, broad rib cages

a feeling as starved and infinite as time.

Histrionics;

This landscape boasts,
it brags it's sudden change
a change I've hardly made
the ice of my regrets still only thawing
and it manages more meaning in a moment
than any life I've ever lived

And so I curl against your form,
and peek from narrow lashed windows
to count the suns in your eyes,
to contemplate the seasons
in the lines of your mouth
to trace the small valleys
and steep ridges of your collarbone
to realize yours is the only landscape that matters.

Sew your fortune on a string;

I think I could stop my heart if I thought about it long enough.

 I only want to warm you from the inside,
cradle your words,
your sad retellings,
and extract the malignancies
in your trembling voice
scatter those tender histories,
divulged under thin veil of night,
among the deader parts of winter
borrowing the lands first blossoms
and quiet markings of spring
to melt against your skin
and into your aching bones