We compare beautiful women to roses 

while we plunder mother earth’s skin, 

the soil where her children suckle 

at an ichor invisible to our eyes. 

​

Is it because of us? 

​

Patience must run deep 

to her molten core. It must 

feel nice to cover our footprints 

with her own chronic making. 

​

She is the salt of herself; 

when we devour her too quickly, 

bitterness bites at our seams. 

So we dilute her passion. 

​

She is palatable when partial. But 

walled up inside, we can’t convince 

ourselves to read for the beggar after 

we’ve grown used to center stage. 

​

Her body comes to life: 

a play dramatized by her avatars, 

the stage quaking with growing pains, 

harmony performing her daily functions. 

​

Why is your heart melting? 

​

Trees poke out of the ground like fingers. 

Clouds swirl above like long locks of hair. 

Bottomless oceans gurgle with stomach acid 

and a rapidly melting core. 

​

We now feel her pain, fathom 

her godlike power, steal glimpses of

her splendor through an eclipsing

peephole, nudging us into a polar night.

​

We forgot the privilege 

of counting on a quenched thirst. 

​

When she cries, overcast gloom diffuses into 

seams she once playfully nibbled at,

seams from which we once swatted 

her away as if she were a rodent. 

​

We don’t realize how hollow we are 

till your emptiness fills us to nothing. 

​

You can emerge
and transform your body to a playground 

for the grateful children 

who frolic and eat hand-to-mouth. 

​

We’re happy for you. 

Our tears wash away the plaster 

of taut smiles stretched thin. 

​

We begged her for more, more, more. 

More flavor. More favors. We held out 

our hands, begged for blessings 

only to receive salt in return. 

​

Is it because of us? 

​

We can gnaw on the sour grains. 

We can cry salty tears. 

We can open our red eyes, 

scorched but fallow for a rose.