Halves of auburn leaves
and I can taste warm milk
on your lips
bottom lip
fireside and hungry
apples, cores, with the seeds
carelessly swallowed
sunset coming at five sixteen
sunset coming every thousand years
sunset coming
sugar seeping through sometimes clasped fingers
carefully
don’t chase me through the
field behind this house
do not call my name
I will come home again
soon
home again to milk and honey lips.
These are his years now
blueberry wine that smeared and began dripping
and I longed to see flowers
blueberry hearts
off violet fingers
violent fingers around his bold mouth
selfishly plucking
I turned my own knuckles green and yellow
putrid and tinting the skylines
broken piers
he claimed, wind to his back, to silence them
to stand and keep standing
but my shoulders remained
blissfully oblivious.
I longed to taste my cinnamon
I longed to be married beneath
screaming oaks
three leaf clovers around my ankles
ridding myself of selfish men
blueberry wine and hunting
boots
there were so many flowers stolen from me.
Suckling at coal and sorrow
children soft as goose down
pipes that played and played
brother stained his hands with charcoal and brick dust
the ones he never liked
the ones he claimed were bitter
lips wiped on Sunday ties
I heard them sing at night
satin summer hymns
complaining about that taste of coal and sorrow
pipes that fell silent as a sun rose
brother ran away that summer
melancholy on his heels
mocking his cerise knuckles
as if to him they were petals
fragile and soft.