Today is thoroughly sad-sick.

She is in the garden picking peas,

I’m in our wardrobe, masturbating, slow.

Sandalwood sneaks around the house,

Frank revolves from another room

as we prepare for tonight’s repair.

I am a lover in her reality

but a liar in her dreams,

a big pumping heart on legs

that beats to the sound of love’s drum.

Where she was once the lamb,

I was once the knife, plunging

to fashion equilibrium.

And as the dark approaches outside,

candles are lit one by one.

A prayer, a question, an answer.

She becomes Medusa, stares at me through the plume

and I turn to stone and she carves me to her ideal.