this is how spring comes,
stripes of green between

herring-boned brick, fern-fronding,
bare-armed, broken-eternitied;

mindful. (i am) convalescent,
cognizant of the dragons

that still lean in, hungry.
they bite at me, at

wrists and cheeks and eyes,
blindfully, so that my shape

is not the shape of others, ever.
after dinner, your stereo

won’t work; you ask me to sing, but
i’ve got only that song

where the girl is leaving and the boy
must drop everything to catch her.

(and that is
not us, after all.)

dragons, as everyone knows,
hate the sun. while you are gone, i sit

on the winter-warmed stoop
bare-armed, watching spring come,

scars palely fade, wondering
how this song will end.