Damage

Cinematic: the gardenias
as they brown.
Plucking the heads/ my hand
going again and again
to them.

These pictures
burn steadily:
a brazen badge like the Virgin’s
heart aflame
or my scalp cut
razor-thin.

My mother’s glass-shorn sheets.
Drunks: obsessive and cutting.

Draw closer: this poem speaks in tongues,
draws its mouth across your body.

For the body is not safe.
Never was.