ryan scariano

Feeling Deeply

If only you could choose

to feel deeply. Since you cannot,

I will feel deeply for us both.

I will bury our hundred summers

in a hole far away.

Like ten thousand miles.

Like I thought I knew

the way home. Like Bull thistle

Russian thistle blood thistle ghost thistle.

Like puncturevine and yellow star.

Like the wishes and curses

I keep in a tiny jar inside

the jar where you keep me. Like my echoing

pleas for mercy and comprehension.

Like the absence of your feeling

pulling me. Like a limping

waltz. Like a rainy man

forced off a homeless corner.

Like Irish whiskey and Xanax bars,

and tar heroin smoked on tin foil.

Like the foggy hawk wrecked

in the gravely shoulder and then

the dead doe in the curve and the fawn

dead on the next curve. Like the wrens

that made their nest

in the battery compartment

of the weed whacker

and the mother’s quiet black eyes

when we discovered her.

Like she pleaded for our mercy

and comprehension.

I will not wake from this

jasmine-scented death,

except with words

pushing through the soil,

into the light

of my bluest room.