"Bloodroot."
"Our native bloodroot.
A girl whose loose tongue wrapped in a single leaf
reveals her.
Glinting surface, dissolute gut.
Each notched blossoms snugly tucked.
Hiding in trees, sheltered from the remnants of winter,
speaking to animals who bow their heads to listen.
Dear fear, a sound made by a living animal is a voice.
Sometimes pursuit is an animal, a swing
toward the essential scream.
A scream also is fire in unpleasant consumption,
scintillate of wits.
Dear fear, true or false, you crawl
into the made up skin, your priority potential,
your actuality is potentate, your carbon, irascible.
Like traffic, we choose when you are in annoyance
and when to fall in stuck with you,
when to have somewhere to go.
On the slant, you point it with hard fingers.
The mirror swings.
My fingerprints double in the glass.
The bodies encroach.
I sharpen the leaden blade of my voice.
Dear fear, some fears exist in space and not in the body.
In some bodies, you are not learned.
But I learned so much about you.
I could never have loved you.
I have careened into that knowledge like a real person.
I have gathered myself into that knowledge
without writing it down.
But now I write all of it down.
And it will mean you still exist.
Your spectrality exists, your infinite veer."