Flowering

Flowering

Melted milk and honey

drops from your mouth

saccharine sweet

I gag on your words

You give me nothing but sugar

yet my life with you is bitter

a rotten after taste hangs in my mouth

and your kisses are as over ripe fruit

Why stay

why bother

my growth is stunted with you

and my person shrivels in your company

We stay in your bed

no longer in the sun

and not even what comes from there

inspires me to trust you

So I lean to the light and grow away from you

my personhood blooming

and the scent of a woman

wafts once more where I live

January 3, 1993

Tressa Lee Breen