Multitude

An army of you, hiding at the back of my eyes,

on the curve of my iris, trampolining.

I’m loping again down a street

much like the one on the letter.

The one dusting itself at the foot of my bed,

steaming with commas and question marks.

Your road is claustrophobic,

when I reach your house it’ll just be a straw

sucked on by the sky. I have hands like slaughter,

I have blood on my chest, the left-hand side,

it’s flowing like boiling red butter.

I have internal bruises too, just inside my ribs,

just below my shoulder.

I wish your house would puff away in a cloud

of transparent smoke, would leave me standing here

like a pole staring into space.

But it’s getting larger with every lope I take.

The dandelions in the garden have your face,

they frown and shake their heads.

Even the dog dirt looks like you.

How come you have such a big door?

Brass handles, padlocks and chains,

an inch of barbed wire over each daffodil,

each flower and weed. I knock, hoping

for some reason, that I might answer the door myself,

and that I might be you, coming to talk it over.

-- Caroline Bird, from Looking Through Letterboxes