
I whispered slush. You chewed my ice. So I sank into the early burial of irises. You washed out spring. I gulped summer, cheeks bulging as I sang along to changing leaves. While stuck inside, I turned to you. Inside of you, old stories smelled less like ink, more like trees. I asked if you could imagine the small things. I begged you to listen to the transponder humming at midnight. But you couldn’t hear. So I ask you now to stop the rain so I can get to work on time. I fired my guardian angels. I’ve no room for passengers. The roses I stopped to smell have died under a leftover sky. I cooked them in a black pot. Their fate? A stew of lingerie. My neck cracks chiropractic from looking up too long at worn roots and jagged shadows. Leave me be. Turn off your forest music because I’ve my headphones in. I can only hear some British invasion, some English beats. Frost, your road less traveled took longer, and it blackened tourist toes. Sure, I saw herons in rice fields. But hawks mocked me from a fence post and black vultures joked about the dead every Sunday. So I went to London and let men blow smoke in my face. I blew it back in theirs. I stared down at leather uppers and proved echoes quack. There, a river boasted foul mouths— mandarins, mallards, and coots. Seems I have afterthoughts, too. But it’s a business watching these tulips near Buckingham because all those queens tiptoed off then stepped on a shard. You told me not to, but I did it anyway. I did it out of spite: I blinked while riding on an eye for an eye.