Glass Prison

Your eyes have never been that color,

glass just fired into shape,

its edges still bending at my touch.

I’ve never imagined them on me

until tonight,

when the moon tried to battle them

into submission.

And what should I do when

my hands want to stifle the light

you blink from across the street?

A torment of mirrors.

That’s what you’ve become.




Break

Breaking him would be

a matter of choosing the right

wrist movement.

Not the one that jerked like

a shopping cart,

twisting at the slightest pressure,

but the one

that was like an origami sculpture.

Breathless.

Weightless.

One twitch of it,

one look of it resting on the desk

and she’d hear his body

cracking open like a scallop.




You, as Temptation

I’m holding this door closed

with both hands.

They shake like grass stalks

as your presence pulses

like a light beneath them.

One more word,

hushed,

bleeding,

might do it.

Leave me poised on nothing

but a curl of your hair.




The Scientist

I deal in obsessions,

trading the glass-like gaze of repetition

for the endless movement of the heart.

I swap faces,            

voices,

mating movements to intentions

to create the perfect creature.

The one I will never find.




Gum Ache

He beats himself over the unsaid.

The threads of it sticking

between his teeth like mango pulp,

digging into his gums

until he fears

they’ll force his teeth apart.