.
Crashing the Wedding of my February to September Lover of 1998
I couldn't unlatch the fence's
lock, but I would make myself
a witness still: the front door's
security was replaced
with ceremony and the hinges
made no protest to my pressure:
let me pass into the kitchen,
where I found the someone's
grandmother holding a blue jay
in her lap: mumbling
last rites as she took
wedding cake poppy seeds
she'd softened in her mouth
to the chipped beak.
She let me sit at her feet.
She closed my eyelids
with her fingertips.
She called me by the name God gave me
on my second deathbed,
after six vertebrae cracked
because my spine was not stronger
than asphalt; because there never
was room enough on the seat of that bike
for you and me and the way your body moved
when you saw any grey Honda
and got to thinking about the gal
who left you in a Las Vegas parking lot
when you were old enough to know better.
She placed seven seeds inside my lower lip;
told me to sing until they sprouted,
when bees would come, taking the notes
from my throat now filled with roots
and make an orchestral excuse on my behalf;
make honey that would turn
sweetened cups of tea into the hemlock
or the castor oil,
but either way, I would not be the bride.
.
.
