stain

Release the petals from the bloom,

free the bright from your eye,

this subtle shift in season 

unreasonable in the atmosphere,

a color, a breeze, a graze of clouds

muddying up the myths held so close

you mistook for your self,

that ominous horizon looming

hard in the story of your heart. 

The reach of budding limbs, 

the parsed out piece of sky swaddled

in thick light and blue shadow 

adding up as more than light and eyes,

the hawk on the fence line, 

the fraught prophecies hidden 

beneath scalp and bone, 

the sharp and the hard and

the pooling, cooling life still warm.

The truth wouldn’t bother 

but for the stain left of speech,

the shuddering tumble left

hanging in the air, your mouth

another misdirect, the magic

all bluff and theft. The facts

fixing the look on your face. 

Spilled blood to seal the bargain,

out of the red, into the black.