I am a doe snitching sips of my husband’s
beer in the last pluck of light. He makes us
a desolation and calls it surrender, his
smack flogs miraculous. Our friends
fist his jaw, lay him flat— the burr of
love gnawing its own shape on my face
against the wind. I watch as the ruffled
maybird’s flight embroiders the widened gloom,
contorting strut-sway of the treeline dissolving the
day at its border. I pull away from the fury of the
group, ascend a hill that isn’t really a hill, more an
outcrop of Precambrian shield, every departed
step undoing the knotted arteries of love, my
tempest escort. Swollen eyes cleave trees real,
shiver their trunks until the horizon line motions,
onward. Bush-thorn spears the bottom of my red
party dress, the claimed rose petals erupting adobe
red in my wake, everything thirsting in the overgrown
stillness of his raptured words.