Somewhere between soft touching and hard kissing, I swerved into love; somewhere between a dead end and a wreck at a hairpin turn. I wrote exotic poems for her, sang them through a hedge of nettle and wire. And when she drained my heart pallid I crumbled comatose for years, for years. O rose of my chest, bramble of the bones, where love sleeps amid a ruin of brick and leaf— Bloom in my teeth, pollinate the tongue. Press your thorns gently to the backs of my eyes! "Vernal Heart" by Bryan Davis (From the book Wilderness & Love )