The Wake

Your fossilized heart scars my tissue--
pound pound pound after pound
weighing on my chest
in the moments I spent prayerless
for your warmth.
My beady eyes are fire spit stinging
the flesh on your knarled sneer.
Go away my phantom hope
and find yourself shaking in the boards
of your father's house. I loved you because
you are, beneath it all--
a cry.

When will I fear the danger, the poachers, the thieves?
O I will tell you. I will fear them when I am not one of them.
When I see my life as yours or any others,
precious as the rock that breaks us.
Defensless lilting hopes we are,
tilting towards the moon, long after
we have laid our monsterous heads down.