I confuse all the trees   for needles

      on these steroids     you fill

a vase with water and prairie aster     late winter rain

      striking the window   like nailheads

I touch       every bruised hole

      across my veins     ringed with adhesive

when I was a girl         my mother taught me

      to draw     the does fleeing the buck

one day       the world won’t have my body in it

      or yours       one day

I will reach for your palm     and touch cloudshadow

      someone else’s thirst         haunting outside

my skeleton         the way I love most

      how these bones run beyond me       full of our soft

and dangerous hearts       the fence

      tangled with the doe       her hooves

another way to pray         with nothing in the mouth

      but how the sky breaks       into branch shadow

on a window         clawed tracks in the dirt

      past the end of the road       meadowlark and rusted screws

in the fence post           a light behind the teeth

          across the field   across the little twisted spine and blood