CactUs

Do you need me to explain how I've
Discovered seeing you in this?
If I tilt my head to forty-five
Degrees it's hard to miss
The eye: unblinking, pink and
Sharp, shot-through with sleeplessness;
But that's only the surface,
What anyone (who doesn't know you)
Might make for obvious.

You know how to last the drought
I've cast across your skies,
And you know how to keep out
Hands that cavalierly try
To pry inside and pour your prize
Across lips stained by dripping lies;
So I am learning not to squeeze
Too tightly with my arguments and pleas.

Hallucinating, stranded,
Half-drowned in dust
I stagger through this backhanded
Apology for my chronic lust,
And hope as my dagger cleaves
Your flesh and yields what it must
That I might last another season
Dry as the bones
Scattered in the wash
From which you've grown.