It feels strange tearing petals off flowers saying He loves me,
he loves me not. More often I feel the need to tear off
my own limbs-I don’t care which ones. Arms, fingertips,
ankles, even kneecaps, as if I could pickle them in a jar
and send them to you wrapped in brown paper
as a kind of apology for always missing you
like phantom limb syndrome.
I am not thinking of you so much as the idea that
the ozone layer still has a long way to go before disappearing
like a rabbit into a magician’s black hat,
and I think it’s quite sad that we always had the capability
to deplete one another in a similar way.
Next to the home of my childhood, there is a mulberry tree
that stains the palms of children who crush its berries
into sweetness in their mouths.
I still bear the stains of you on my palms in all the places
we exchanged touches, no matter how many bars of lye soap
I buy under the watchful eyes of a disapproving shopkeeper.
They were not written in disappearing ink.
Forgive me for always being the plane ticket
when you wished I’d be the round trip to nowhere instead.
The real truth is, splinter or no splinter, I was never very good
at leaving my emotional baggage behind on any of my travels.