What were you supposed to think?
Bent head, servile pose, over oven, or kitchen sink
Locked behind your bedroom door with YOURSELF, with your FEAR, with your UNTAMED WAY
Your heart still growing, beating, yearning, for reciprocation, every day
So you bury yourself in your April gardens, and up sprouts me
Lifted onto your old, green soul
To give me love you'd never seen
You die your deaths in the shallow breaths
In the culvert of that love and fear
And your overcrowded head somehow leaves room for everybody but yourself
Never granted the gentle night
Never a respite from the self-sight
Never danced inside your own sunlight
Never out from under the shadow of world-fright
But you, you grew
And I grew too, when you were two days into the sick
Pins and tumblers just wouldn't click
And when you still can't fight it now
A decade-old fear comes back around
But I would carry you on my back for miles before you suffered alone again
"She would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile i ever saw"