To Me

I

Desert

I have not taken water today.

My tongue is swollen,

My throat parched.

My body is a desert.

But impossibly, these tears do not run dry.

They roll on, large, and heavy

salting this grieving earth

as if this were a fertile land

only now in ruin.

 

II

Poison

I have been found corrupt, a trickster.

The world dripped its venom on me;

and I writhed beneath that serpent.

When you arrived,

you caught the poison in a glass.

In time the ache will grow weaker,

And with every drop I quake a little less;

but you are still gone—

there was no one to hold a glass for you

to catch the poison that dripped from me.

III

Autumn

Only this season reeks of decay.

In winter it is buried;

in spring we wipe ourselves clean.

I am not lost, not yet. Please—

let me bury it;

let me wash it from my skin.