You Are My Thorn / Kasia Lachowska

You Are My Thorn

"Hope is the thing with feathers ... "
                    - EMILY DICKINSON

Do You Read

my intuition has always smelled
the birdlike origin of expectations
for their pneumatic bones that only fowl may have
now I have come to know the species
for being the lightest of all

I will have the albino humming-bird of hope
sit on my wrist as tenderly as your fingertip
as a reminder it is neither too late to obey
nor pray

hence I pray this sole grace of thee
the most egoistic take-away of fate
I forbid you to die ahead of me
since I carry you inside like a drip-feed
like a bushy living thorn

if you dare not to hear my plea
your boldness shall not be pardoned
so was not the courage of those
who have already vanished beneath

and thorns are hard to pull
leave wounds that will not heal
yet bleed as unceasingly as the gilt
marguerites of cemetery candles grow
on the friends' marble tombstones
unworldly common rooms' desks
not inciting anyone to chat

even though I stem them
with the best of brand new wicks
the Red Sea tides of my parting-phobic heart
will not step aside
so you might go through
and I might stay alive

its heartless clock will not cease to tick
and you will keep playing your dreadful tricks
on unfortunate me

~~
Kasia Lachowska
Bydgoszcz, Poland

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]