Price

I fear this price
What is demanded?
A prick of blood
Years of unknowing,
Dead, like sleep
The name I refuse to call

My worth is tempered
With steel, and heart
Folded in my pockets
Hidden from the numbers
Calculated and offered

I know that you see
My hand, bent back
Covering in modesty
My allowances, tested
With your overreaching and
Insincerity

I may glance under eyelashes
Reaching you
Evaluating the risk

This weight
The price of words to me
Can sit and fill
Spilling

Why is it you are charged
By a glance under eyelashes
Or a glimpse of my flesh
Do you see an imprint of my worth
Behind the soft hair on my neck
the numbers changing with age

Locket, Part One

The logs were tucked into the woodpile
You frozen in place, holding the axe
Like the hunter who saved children

One night you called so far
I heard the inner stirrings of how
Your life was leading

That chance that took me out of
School, down the driveway, into
The warmth of home

When I entered I didn’t know
Leaving would be permanent
I wonder still how you plucked
Me in too, the in between

The simple elements
To comb and shave
The preparations guiding you
And letting me go
On our terms

I placed in me that locket
Opening again and again

Beyond This

I can’t bear the type-ing that
Places my heart and eyes in your dishes
Ciphers not for consumption
"They" pick over, unaware of these habits

These extractions are self-made
Your difference is gleaming
Closer, the light shines transparent
Here and here, here

My place fits inside like a thistle
Pretty with needles placed in
Needles placed out
The bloom made for you

Frozen in resin, hands prying still
These things of you, of I
Made of me, are contained and exploited
Careful focus is recommended

Beyond this, what can I share?
The arrangements have been spoken
Flower, eyes, lips, heart
It is up to you