Written this winter; a revision.

I Wish I'd Never Let You out of That Drawer (or This Ain't Neverland, Darlin')

Something keeps snapping
Fourth-of-July fluorescent necklace
Green-beans-into-the-bowl
Perforated-paper snapping
Is it you or I, dear
Who keeps doll-joint popping?
Something between my shoulders jumps.

sweetest Shadow,
You are more beautiful than I

is it you, my dear
Pulling at my fingertips
Where we connect gouged-tabletop cold?

They're blunt pencils,
I could never stretch them
To make spirals out of strings

But the sick bone-cracking
when you pull, darling,
Makes something between my eyebrows clench.

I wish you everything
dear sweet Shadow
That my ten painted pencils
Are too blunt to grasp,
That my tendrils are too curled to reach
I have always been
Too swelling and too folded
To meet and fit together

I'll feel you whispering away
At sunset, when your legs are long
To wrap around a thousand lovers,
And your head
Higher than mine will ever stretch

I want to stop
The ears-on-an-airplane popping
When we pull against each other,
dearest Shadow