let me face my fears

The marigolds know your name and hum it back to me like a hymn. In a garden full of secrets, you never know whose words are dripping poison. I spin you something holy, draw the line at depicting you god- like. You’re a boy and your body is held like a trigger. My hands are clumsy and my mouth is shameless. Months after you nail your vanishing act, I will still be resurrecting you in my art. Years from now they will find the blue thread tangled beneath my skin. You, as a robin’s egg king. My marigold eyes never seeing you as anything less than the space the sun won’t stop touching. Red in the center, sliced open cherries, spilling out across my tongue. I hold my breath, call you magician, feign surprise when the dove flocks out with a broken neck.

“he was the first boy that made you brave enough to openly want something. you bloomed like chrysanthemums under his hands. spun yourself gold. hung the sun from your tonsils. every time you opened your mouth, you wrote him into light. told him, i don’t see the dark, i only hear the birds. made him the muse, turned yourself martyr. loved him until your face turned blue. until your spine became wishbone. your body turned meadow. grew in the midst of a frost. shook off the ice crystals and opened your mouth. showed him the sun. reminded him of the songbirds. promised to keep being the light if he promised not to swallow the dark.”