by F.J. Bergmann
You held my gaze a second too long.
You were smiling when you didn’t mean it.
I thought I heard you say my name
in a conversation with another woman.
When the moon waned with the year,
I felt threatened,
so I left the letters on your desk, written with
a Rapidograph filled with blood (mine)
and an anti-coagulant; unsigned,
because I knew that you knew.
I sent you the nesting marquetry boxes
containing dried poppies and a grackle skull.
I nailed maimed homunculi braided from black grass
to the outside of your house at points corresponding
to the six cardinalities, where you will never find them.
No translation should have been necessary
but you did not acknowledge or apologize
so I entered your dark house while you were
asleep and hid behind a large rock
and met you less than halfway up the mountain
as you trudged back home from the valley of night.