You can’t ask me what is wrong,
because it’s always something different.
You can’t ask me why I’m acting this way,
because I can’t explain it.

I will tell you I love you,
and for a while my voice
will echo back the stone walls
of your throat,

and then I’ll find myself alone
in a taunting, repeating cave that lies.
It doesn’t matter that you say you love me,
or that I believe it.

My love is strong and deep and fiery;
it imprints itself like a brand on my own flesh.
I imprinted on you, like a mother duck to her
babe, or maybe it goes the other way.

You can’t ask yourself what went wrong
unless you want to come down with
me, briefly, into my net of nonsense
and mental illness.

There you’ll find my mother,
and the time in the first grade
when I was molested,
and the time I stepped on an ant

and cried for ten minutes.
Listen.
I am a wave, an ocean wave.
I crash and roar, I nurture and heal,
and tear myself down
every time I breach.
I will take you in my warm
embrace, and we will for a while
float, but the time
will come
when I will have to drag
you against the glass-sharp pebbles
at my gargantuan belly.