after Catherine Pond

 

You, wandering man, split my chest each day

as rain does above a field of burning daffodils.

And when I woke, red-winged blackbirds.

 

Our beginning a wound of heart, a pomegranate

smacked with a bat, its bowl of bright rubies

 

spilling from me to you.

 

After us, I was a violet sky     black with those birds

again. Each one a form of self, destruction, & ember.

 

If I am the architect, consider my spine rolled,

a blueprint tied. Its mess of white lines a spindling

 

of almost-skeleton. My body still learning how little

connected, or felt deserved. Like a house betrayed

 

by the night, the unseen love of its one basement

light as the yard fills with breadcrumbs.

​

 

Now, each luscious dawn is ignited by the weight

of light being pulled underground. Each of my pupils

 

a round, saturated planet that whistles all the reasons

to remain:

 

Quick ankles in dandelions. Talking of sex,

or the orange flood of daffodils. All of it occasional—

​

a jolt of pink lightning down to the bone. Only once

it’s gone do you see the X on your wrist. A cross

​

of wandering, of found.