You use
an instrument of tusk,
of yellow tooth,
imperfections filed
into ghost.
They are invisible, to most.
Your fingers know.
I know your fingers.
I know them in the salt-sea.
I know them, charcoal-smudged,
smelling of smoke.
I know them pulped by fruit,
still wet with sea,
the sweet and the sour.
With this object,
your spider-fingers take
from wires hidden
in a box.
You transform
a swell of notes.
The stars, a silence, a sudden
dive and then a thunderstorm
- and now I have forgotten
how to take my skin off
like a lady's dovegray glove
and put it back on
as purple as the stomach of a flea.
To run like a deer.
To hide like a hay stalk in a hay stack.
All I can do
is root,
and snarl, and feel my thoughts
tangle and cross, grow green leaves,
edged like teeth
and dense with veins.
All I can do is snarl, tangled
heavily across this chair,
and cling to the wall.
At least I have thorns,
although I open wide, whiter than silk
and redder than thread.
Despite my head,
I blossom like fire from a match.
I forget
how to shed
this shape:
When you close the lid,
and take your fingers from the monster's teeth,
and come to pluck me,
scatter my petals
so that I will never grow again—
I hope you bleed.