Coming back from the wavering dark,
The trees and houses streaming,
The headlights splitting the fog.
My fists are clenched
And resolutely I resist the urge
To grasp any paper, and inscribe it with any pen.

Scraps of emotion conjured ex machina
Tumbling towards any receptive surface.
My struggle is to contain them, to stop them from being written
Or said.

You put a poem in me.
It’s breaking free.

The lights gamboling in my head are words-
You’re there, urging them.
My fingers twitch in the recycled air, the splintering darkness
I hate and hope.
I hate the hope you’ve given me.

How glad I am that all of my notebooks
Are in the next town, and I am helpless to scrawl
These unholy words on their trembling pages.
White lines like virgins, unsullied.
How silly.

You put a poem in me.
It’s breaking free.

I’d go anywhere just to be rid of this,
To finally be relieved of the burden of these words.
I can’t be entrusted with the responsibility
Of sending them into the world.
They’re too fractured, fragmented, and swollen with emotion.
I couldn’t unleash them
Knowing their nature.

But the trickster in you has tugged them to the front of my eyes
And now they swim before me on a computer screen.
God forbid you should ever read them.
The words, the embers of a poem,
A poem you put in me
That’s broken free.