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[Afraid! Of whom am I afraid?]

7 [Afraid! Of whom am I afraid?] all that i love, i tremble by—all that pleasures for a moment brings regret by morning, remembrance is to rosemary as rue is to forever— a little birdie told me he no longer loved me. i plucked its downy feathers; i split its skin open. my hands still glow from the morning after what i can’t remember— how this holler in its breast shows me of the drowning set, how this moment is recorded in the spine. a gold no spelled against the viscera; my love wrote it there for me. i know this organ by its gravity— and borrowed feathers can’t disguise how his eyes retreat from mine— and the dull light i emit in the dark isn’t enough to read this heart, to parse the worms that nibble destiny, the word we use for doomed. ...