Let’s Clarify

Let’s Clarify

Girl takes her cherub lips, presses them to mine. 
My soul slips out, and dangles, a Christmas ornament 
glinting from fire, woken up for the holiday and set to die 
come the first of January; let’s clarify, that this girl
is a girl I love, with chestnut hair and almond eyes, who
collects fallen leaves in autumn, plants them like seeds
when spring arrives, and she’s planted her dead things
in me, knows that she will run backward into church,
kneel, shy and bleed like a healthy female child, 
come Lent she’ll abstain from candy, and for Penance
she’ll confess my neck, my breasts, my Roman nose
and slim thighs, nothing a well ordered prayer can’t cure
happens, swoops up into a wind, is buried six feet. 
Dirt covers me, and on occasion, I still choke on it. 

First published in Whimperbang October 2019.