When I push your button
you fly off the handle,
old skin and bones,
black bat wing.
We’re alike, you and I.
Both of us
resemble my mother,
so fierce in her advocacy
on behalf of
the most vulnerable child
who’ll catch his death
in this tempest.
Such a headwind!
Sometimes it requires
all my strength
just to end a line.
But when the wind is at
my back, we’re likely
to get carried away, and say
something we can never retract,
something saturated from the ribs
down, an old stony
word like ruin. You’re what roof
I have, frail thing,
you’re my argument
against the whole sky.
You’re the fundamental difference
between wet and dry.