Impatient, elusive, intense,
all coiled momentum, torque
tempest, turnstile, taciturn,
your voice surgical, a scalpel,
a gramophone under water,
as though to resuscitate a
specter that was never there.

This, from the man who loves me,
calls me a hurricane, a war.
Don’t seek asylum here anymore,
he tells me. Something about
independence and emotions
the attributes of a child or so.
Charcoal eyes, shrapnel sharp,
relentlessly ruthless and I
shape-shift into stone, tongue
bloated with what I can’t say,
what I’m tired of saying, I
blink my eyes into distant spheres,
picture the rings of Saturn, the sea
and I don’t cry, crack or care.