I try to banish it from my brain, these dreams where I am bulbous & beautiful. where I am the butternut & she is the squash bug, burrowed into my bosom, my bowels, the base of my spine. her vine. a buzz betrays a blush of bees & bougainvillea above me. I blink & the bubble-gum blossoms crumble into beetles & blistered bark. the little bug breathes in. begot onto a barren land, she makes the best of each feeble bounty: the bullfrog’s lullaby, the bird eggs, the bunnies. boredom, bravery, bear tracks, brackish baths & in the bleak midwinter, cranberry beads on balsam fir. for birthdays, bouquets of box elder & bur oak, bracelets of buckthorn & birch. she can’t believe how many flowers there were, once, buds & blooms with bouncy names: buttercup begonia bluebell black-eyed susan bachelor buttons bleeding heart. I teach her, in turns, how to bite & beg. how to boil burdock, bait traps. how it all must be: blood, blight, boars, boys, berries. how to cut away the bad until the blemish is gone. how to begin anything with a bundle of sticks. how to build, balm, blacken, bury, obliterate. this poem is a backburn, a minor blaze born to bleed the fuel of the bigger, more desperate flame. am I an arsonist? her braid becomes a brushfire before I can tie the bow.
