THESE TREES KNOW FIRE THE WAY MY BODY KNOWS TOUCH

​I have always been
            dry grass.                  Smoke.
The ruins that make up
                                            my grandfather’s home.
This night, the scent
                 of fennel.                 The scars
on my wrists and arms.
                                                                    And what is a girl
but a knife. All wilderness. God,
you can’t expect me to be
                                                                   good.
I’m half-thicket,                  half-thorn.
I’m half-made
                                                                   of water.
Up ahead there’s a barn
                                                     on fire. No,
it’s covered in autumn leaves. And water floods
from my eyes. No,
                                                                 it’s rain falling
from the clouds
            staining the sky. The trouble
with water:
                                               it lets nothing go
untouched.            Like hunger.
And what was my crime but to turn to water:
to let nothing go
                                                             untouched,
tracing a wrist-bone, a bow
                 of lips. Fingers tracing the veins
of the leaf I plucked
                                                              off a branch.
Thumbing the blade
               of a butter knife. I watch
the grass bow to the breeze
and I submit
                                               to my hungering hands,
to the burning barn within me.