Your lips are the poisonous icing, the summer-day sweet of a fairy's wedding cake,

the first kiss floods my lungs with dread,

but another, lingering of mouths, is the antidote.

You arms are a beautiful crown of thorns, in the way nature's viscous things

are her more dazzling gems.

Roping, and clinging, as if your presence is a nightmare.

(In all of my abandon, it should be.)

You rooted me up like a weed from the sidewalk,

and he was the moss there, he was the moss there.

You can be my king, of black little secrets, prince of

promises, that shatter on the floor,

He loved me, and now it's too late.

I felt that burn this morning, that fetus-growing-inside-me burn.

The images that rake my mind have scarlet fingers,

scraping at mental film strips, that blank night of numbness.

Now who will pay, for this one day breathing burden?

A son whose skin was woven from mistakes, in a womb

that was too young.

You will not want him, and neither will he.

I wish to be a weed again, browning and crisping into death.

I want to be a solitary weed, dead and gone from the sidewalk.