Each malevolence has a cousin that heals it. I fancy Hurtsickle and Heartsease as herbal enemies –weeds growing in reach of one another; the bite and the balm in balance.

Back at the cottage we explored the topography of my body; twigs in my hair, calves striped red and my skirt smudged in meadowtones. The forest underlined me, accentuated me, illustrated me. I felt alive in that midnight village whose dark places left their signatures on my skin, whose bites still hummed around my wrists. I didn’t notice till then the thousand nettle stings rising like pearls; burning bracelets that my love kissed and rubbed with dock leaves; a folk remedy painting my pulse points green; honorary stalks.

He’s always been attracted to broken things. He was the kind of boy who talked the bad girls through their problems, who defended them and didn’t take advantage. He was sensitive to his stuffed animals’ feelings, rotating their position on his bed so that a new plush animal would occupy pride of place at his pillowside every night. Soon I became first and foremost on that pillow; princess of the island of misfit toys.

All of the sudden, we were a grown-up married couple! Like little figures in a doll's house, we sat there dazed, in awe, wishing a chubby little arm would pass through a window and move us around, tell us what to do. We would have given anything for a magnificent child to show us how to be husband and wife.

Every Sunday behind bibles, virgins,
soldiers tight against me, longing,
and my pelvis rubbing gods'
to the big black woman voices.

Soldiers tight against me, longing,
all that rising, sitting, kneeling
to the big black woman voices,
spirits warming, tensing, folding, then

all that rising, sitting, kneeling
like some kind of dance, a mating,
spirits warming, tensing, folding and
god went “Shhhhh” between my thighs –

Transparent tubes divided Phil’s blood into shades of red, fading to straw colored plasma. I watched his fluid swirl past his shoulders and disappear into machines. He offered himself to blood banks all over the city, his plasma rushed to hospitals where it would circulate through other people’s bodies. The map of my love’s tapped arteries would look like a bloodshot eye over the city of Albuquerque. His blood bought us dinner. I dreamed he was my mother, and I nursed his arm. I wrote a poem about it, how I suckled his arm dry like a sore teat.