You peel back lips and digits, white and pink,
at a familiar green iris on an asphalt street.
But inside your eyes, at the back of the skull,
lie a million brilliant murals, on a canvas wall,
of angry grey clouds on a sun lit grass plain.

Your brown bushy dam quivers with the strain,
then with dawn's light, the grimace breaks.
But between lines on the foreign dirt page,
book worms wiggle in a shifting and strange
pattern of words with a silk syllable twist.

You push through dead wood and slip
in a wool sweater cocoon to tenderly kiss.
But through the gap between your brows
is shared little giggles, without a sound,
and an entire narrative, like sushi, wrapped.

You feel the red ribbon is being stretched
before snapping across your moving chest.
But a beat before, in a torrent of despair,
were screams in a gym with angry tears,
at limbs on the edge of bending at the knee.

You bloom on a branch of the family tree
adding more rings before breaking free.
But in between the ticks on your clock,
ages and phases pass by and time-
stops.