i have a thin drop of water
between my thumb and index finger
that i play with when it rains;
you leap through the warmth
that comes with your tall summers;
everywhere i look, everyone is the same,
moving, writhing in the heat.
i am jealous. i am still. i am cold.
i am here,
in my southern winter,
my fever of snow.

alas!
i am in love.
i am in love with despair,
with the feeling of pushing people away.
oh, the satisfaction that they will never know me
quenches my thirst like nothing else.
i feel them leaving,
and the thick voice inside me drips with praise,
smiling sweetly against my teeth.
how charming is sorrow,
how heavenly the vindication.

bright phoebus trails a hand in the brush to feel the flowers catch and snag between slender fingers;
fields of grass wrap themselves over the rounded hills;
violets stretch in the hot sun;
the enormous oak tree behind reaches out and skims the surface of the heavens;
the wasps make nest in its branches, darting out and around the occasional plummeting acorn;
the air ripples with the sweetness of hyacinths;
the cypresses line the horizon, a herd of deer graze in their shadows;
the man [who is not a man] rests against the trunk, sighing, eyeing the budding laurel tree that shivers in the warm breeze;
the Cyrean hives hum pleasantly;
twin calves plod towards the man [who is not a man], and a palm is reached out to caress their young heads;
everything is sweet;
everything is lush;
everything is warm.

the siren calls out from her sea-wrought rock;
the ocean lapping at her speckled wings;
i will always throw myself off the dock;
to drown below as her grinning mouth sings.

i do not remember serving a feast;
nor descending to obey the fruit tree;
tantalus tries but God thinks of us least;
for the both of us will never be free.

when i bind my long hair upon my head;
triumphant samson lifts his callused hands;
for when delilah leads us to her bed;
still we will sing her song across the lands.

temptation my religion, doomed am i;
to slither the earth in order to fly.