i Know that

taciturn eyes
you taunt
when blistered hands plead to find your heart
through a soft scrape against
coarse whiskers
,you play
as if I do not belong to you
and you not to me.

I know
that
if first man had never fallen,
your love would have
grown inside of me,
tender      quick
as canna lilly
underneath my rib;

an echoing extension of you
with the very texture
and stamp of you
and you
would not laugh or cry
without awareness we are real

as it were,
as the dust has seen it,
               there is no blossom here,
just a handful of brambles
a beardful
            of apathy
and a mouthful
            of fears