Cloverleaf

Some roads lead nowhere;

They’re my favorites.

I held my breath while

You drew my face in

Blinding strokes and

Creamed my mouth with curling lines

Destroyed one picture; then another.

Left at dawn while I

Ran downstairs in circles, calling

Raging, spending

Nights without you,

No blue thigh guards

My sleeping heart while yours looks out

To gauge the coming storm.

Now I’m trapped in cloverleaves

Sentenced to school figures

 By endless angry judges.

Every face I paint is yours; balked by

 The enervating past

Of unlived lives.

Open up the chilly ruffles

Of my breasts

To beauty; yours and mine and your

Strange spine’s;

 A body so much lighter

Than the mountain that you loved

 The course you learned

Much better than you learned me.

Overconfident that

 you’ll come back

I float across the powdered snow;

In bird-winged silence

all-enveloping

Lost and frozen like my heart?