Nightshade

Dara Wier

As when asked someone says
I'm picturing your blood
Traveling through your fingertips
Up past your wrists.
One sick cookie, I thought,
Or just another anybody
Toying with an idea,
Another someone out to scare
Oneself half-to-death,
I'm picturing the air glide
Into your lungs.
I'm seeing smoke explore
The empty spaces there.
Now I'm locking my eyes
And your eyes together
With my astonishingly soulful
Glue and adding on a padlock
And watching it rust and losing
The keys and should we meet up
On Crosspath Road I will say
It was meant to be, look at how
Our ankles look out for one another,
Look at how the nightshade vines
Reticulate in the mountain laurel,
Twisted brother.

University of Virginia Virginia Quarterly Review
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University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22903-3237
ISSN 2154-6932