Grief pools in me like hunger,
And I have an appetite but I can't eat.

Today's horoscope warned me too late,
Sundown on Saturday,

Of the rip tides inside of me,
Of the waves that have lured me out to sea-
Whispering little temptations,
A mother's warmth,
Another's safe embrace.

So I said yes.

Fool was I not to have known,
For my destiny is spelled as brightly
As the sun in the light of the stars
And my blindness is my own shortcoming-

I am a broken vessel to be cast aside,
Worth enough to recycle for the next
To profess grand things and make promises.

I am a thing,
A force like a tsunami,
In whose face men cannot
But break vows not yet made.

Loud in love
To compensate
For the silence
That has taken hold
In all my inner chambers.

And to write
Becomes a last resort,
That I quit once when a man quit me,
But that is naturally my only solace.

I was born to die,
My faith was built to lose its way,
And I fall in love time and again

For though I am "impure"

I am innocent

And the world has not wholly succeeded,
Though it tries with every car crash
And with every war
And with every child like myself
Used and tossed away,
With every ultimatum made
To make  a woman stay-

To make the innocent in me fade.

So it sends another demon
More believable than the last,
More deceptively good, truly,

And perhaps this one has.