Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

it has dawned
on me again
the time
i attempted
to be manipulated
by the caress
of your arms
down to the
pasty skin
of your legs—
i could sense you
no matter
where you go
you leave
a trail
for me
to follow

then suddenly
it just
came to me
this something
right turns out
to be
a whole lot
wrong
i was fooled
i became tethered—
my thoughts
my say
weren't considered
tough luck
to date
still undeciphered
disordered
and even
misheard

now
as i go back
into the verse
i remember
the first verse
it was me
all along who
attempted this
manipulation first—
and she just
quenched
my thirst