I didn’t tell you that after reading your letters last night I walked across the alfalfa field with a candle

to light the way and sent you a telegram at eleven o’clock—and carried back a bucket of hot water 

to take a bath—and you didn’t tell me about the cocoon in your bed—a butterfly

so heavy to think about—though she never does as much as she is 

prepared to—people change but not all butterflies can show you the ground 

you are best coming to—sorry not sorry—eventually the candle was running, all veins

down my hand, and I bathed in the dark, like lying in an eye with the lid down. I’m still stuck 

on the structure of dragonflies—80% of my brain is not vision. Just imagine it were. 

I don’t have that organ for slitting leaves apart to put my eggs in them.

My hands are too busy trying to keep hold. Maybe I am better this way, carrying glints, 

phases. This season they are dark bath or pink the moon will show me.

Dearest—Have you considered the hue to every question, the complex, not just 

rotten ones, like the mud of do you love me, though who am I—not the field—

to denigrate mud or insecurity? I feel like saying Yes to everything you say to me or ask me

when it is a moving towards me—You must know that—I’m bonfire-restless but 

each night swayed all in your direction. As for the day it’s all sitting around

the table eating stewed cherries—My painting moved very fast—there are forests 

to burn—tomorrow we will see what it moves to—It sort of knocks 

my own head off—the head I was born with—birds, too, spit out their cherry 

stones one by one. The woman rises. The Polish word for mirror 

is the Italian word for five years. Are you surprised languages won’t fit 

in my head, that they spill all over the roads, making them dark and relieving, 

drowninable? A man approaches the fire to give me cold old charcoal so I can hold 

the very core of something. Pressing matter. It squeaks in my hands. I have it all over me.