Cinema of a Solitude Part I

 le drame

There are some things you never overcome,
the tragedies of bent lilies and two-pocket
folders. All day I’m braced for attack.
Fight or flight. Fire at will. The water in me
always murky and brackish. Somewhere
a man disrobes, humming off key

while a woman clenches hard with her fists.
This dialogue makes me red-blooded
and ravenous, on my knees licking at lights
in the carpets. In the field we wait
for the fires to stop. For the longing to stop.
You’ll enter me while I pick the burs

from my skirt. There’s a boy who locks a
piano then opens a gate to sunlight and I’m
all wound, all wound. How the fingering
must be perfect and it either comes to you
or not. Our childhoods invariably a shivering,
a hush, a slam of car doors in the night.