it's true
they did love you once.
feared you too, but
maybe that's the same thing,
gave you
roast pigs and animal pelts
and you didn't even have to ask.
a pretty good arrangement.

now
i'm the only one that sticks around
and even then only
when i'm bored.
i'm taunting and i'm cruel and you, love,
are not a great conversationalist
but
it evens out.

so i get to
take jabs at you
til you're frothing at the mouth,
like seafoam, briny
shaking valleys and hills with
your anger. and i can't help but laugh
at you. you,
with your dusty ruby eyes
(that lie now in a museum
somewhere
because the white men walked into your temples and plucked them right out -)
and your stone paws,
roughly hewn, mossy,
ugly.
we laugh and laugh
about what you lost
between galileo and darwin and euler,
so many years and the
backs of men.