Shelly Reed The 2River View, 7.3 (Spring 2003)
Five Thorns for an Unnamed Beast

1

You're the cigarette I lit
in a life when I smoked;
the night I almost put my soul
up for sale, tasseled and oiled.

2

You're the crop that failed
religiously, year after year,
replanting itself on my land
where something else wanted to grow.

3

You're the fur I could not wear
when snow rearranged my bones.
I painted a hearth over my wall,
stood shivering in its reds and golds.

4

You're the illness turned epidemic,
the syringe loaded not with cure,
but a mutating virus injected
in a vein, long collapsed.

5

I'm the smoke suffocating you,
the searing flame metaphor,
the earth opening my wound
to receive your cremains.

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