I'd like to cut my heart open
to take you out
or maybe
to see you one more time

You ache in me
like a flu shot arm

Driving home this morning
I join the rolling green hills of the country,
we yawn ourself awake
and push the dew out of our eyes.
Passing the barns and black fences,
I dream a new life for myself here.
A horsehair life,
long and coarse.
In the spring, I'd push seeds into the moist soil
and cross my fingers.
In the fall, I could lose myself in the stalks of gold,
if I wanted to.
I could tear up my calendar,
write a new one on upside-down tobacco
and leafy greens and the sun.
I know I'd be stronger, too.
I'd grow on bales of hay, lifted high,
and on pine wood, axed in two.
But my eyes are on the lines on the road
and I follow them on.

I think about you at the oddest times
which is to say, all the time.
When my eyes are open
and when they are closed,
my mind finds you, all the same.
When I’m walking up the stairs
or down them, it’s you I’m approaching.
In the morning when I stretch my legs
and at night when my arms search
it’s you they’re after.
It’s you in the space between too,
In the dreams I cannot choose.
In a sense, I can never choose.

I’m appear when the darkness comes
to bring the shadows up from the ground,
where they grow and reach and then disappear into an ocean of themself.
The oak tree above me is my mind
but it’s branches confuse me,
a maze of fingers twisting that I cannot
escape as they climb climb climb.
I search for you because I have to.
Into the house and the room where you are
where you were where you should be
The darkness scares me because it is me.
I scratch at the windows and the floor
to escape or to look for you I do not know.
When the morning comes to bring shadow
the tree fingers ****** me again
to become its roots deep deep away
from you the dark steals me.