About my brain, its wires glitching
like a jellyfish sprite
flashing its apple-red tentacles
above my countless thunderclouds.
About your eyes, not a savior’s eyes
but brown as blood. I was wrong
about the God I warped
into a weapon, a garrison.
Wrong about love, too. I thought love
was my mother’s soprano tessitura
screaming. I thought love was
a violence. Verdi’s requiem, Dies Irae.
You thought love
was love. New-millennium emo. February
flooding the school below the palms
wringing their palms
like willows the morning after
you rinsed gas-station zin from my hair.
I’m sorry I chased you for years
the way a cowbird tails the cow—
not for love of the beast
but for the insects it kicks up.
She ditches her eggs
in someone else’s nests
to do this. Kills someone else’s young
to do this. This possessed. I was.