Her words are cherry pits upon her tongue.
She tries to spit them, but they germinate
and grow like antlers through the velvet nap
of hair I long to stroke. Her eyes unfurl
one thousand times as leaves, while roots curl round
to cage and feed upon her heart. No sap
is sweeter than her blood, no fruit more red.
And now her words are chinese lanterns, hung
from blossomed boughs; their meaning luminate,
but easy to extinguish. Mere decor
to adorn dryad remnants of a girl
whose skin of knotted bark can still confound
my senses. Though the one I loved before
has bloomed so strange, her juices stain my bed.
