for three days you have been radiant.
last night you were okay, too.
but I come home tonight to discover you have changed your mind.

you do not look at me.
you avoid my anxious gaze.
each of us wordless, you know where I have and have not been tonight.

you hang your heads
in a disappointed fashion
that eats at me the way an aphid would, were I to let one touch your silken lips.

your mere presence in my history-filled room
was already enough, before this.
and it is not you with whom I am suddenly disgusted, and I begin to cry.

you look too much like my past.
you intrude upon tonight’s would-be bliss.
still silent, you remind me that my impulses have sometimes been shortcomings.

your bloodred bosoms crestfallen,
your sullen stalks dismayed,
you forget you arrived here on an anniversary that has long meant little to me.

five years and five days later,
your messenger still rings a bell
which stings my ears worse than your sore thorns could ever prick my fingers.