Poem, untitled

My heart's flutters have started again.

This is when they start, when we move into spring.

In my head, winter is temporary, the road you take to get to spring,
but spring is permanent.
Spring is home, the door you walk out of, into the sunshine.

Summer is temporary, too, the road you take to get to autumn--
the comfortable back door you
meander in through.
No hurry to get inside, even though it's getting dark.

There are the seasons on the maps
and the seasons in my head.
This one says winter, but it's spring-eve,
when I start to wake up,
untangle,
get ready to open the doors and let the wind pass through me:
cold, going on hot.

My heart starts to flutter
and my hands
and my arms
feel filled with tears I haven't cried
and screams I haven't freed.
There's a havoc inside me, waiting with no patience to
blossom, bloom, burst open,
to have air on my skin warmed by nothing but the position of the earth in the sky.

Every year I grow closer to the flowers.
They describe the lunatic unbalance I feel; we share that.
Mine comes out in tears and giggles;
Theirs escape in unruly colors and lush perfumes,
in vines that reach to the heavens, and roots that marry them to the earth.
But I am one of them.


Someday, when my mind has untethered itself for good,
I'll be telling people that my name is Rose,
but that in reality, I'm a morning-glory.