Heavy

Love always
Love all
ways
Love all
weighs

Drugstore Indian

Your anger
boils at a low simmer
filling the air between with
steam
thick and sticky
obscuring daylight.

I want to ask you
why
you are so mad
at me
haven't I done what you asked?
Freed you from the chain
of your love for me?

But you do not acknowledge
the anger
or any emotion
you have become
another wooden indian
standing in the door
of the drugstore
wearing the Red
of Colonial Times
as armour against
your savage self.

No, you say nothing
and will just nurse your
anger and
drop diatribes veiled as
helpful hints
that only help
the beat me further down.

How would I know?

Somewhere we forgot to
talk
To tell the truths we kept only for each other
and then one day
You
dropped the
shell that exploded

And I was supposed to just pick up
the pieces of life
and move on

Because I no longer
Turned you on
Turned you in
Turned your head

But
how would I know
you wanted something different
did it not occur to you
That maybe I did, too.

That maybe I wanted you
to turn
me on to new things
that we could find
together as we used to
when
everything was
new
and we still
Looked
at each other
and not away.

Emotional Growth Plates

I feel a cracking and stretching

the growth plate in my heart
quivers
and shakes
and like the
Grinch
I feel
it
expanding
to a size and shape
never before known

it is a place for you
to hide
safe
all you have to do
is enter

More marriages die

from sins of omission
than those of commission

So I find forgiveness
for those sins which were mine
and yours
and ours

And vow next time
to hit the mark

Spoils

I see now that it
started
the first time she flirted with you
jesting, smiling,
telling you secrets as a friend
a confidant
who could help save her
from herself. . .
but really she was only testing you
to see if you were ripe
to be picked
like all the others she
had eaten and then
spit
out in pieces
left to rot.