15.

The aspersion she cast cuts deep: the times

Wind down like theories built on algebra

And Hymen sleeps in mythology

Tired, perhaps oblivious, to graphs and curves

Charting the decline of the bed strewn with flowers

The wedding torches have gone smoky

And the vexation of the spirit and flesh

Divorces hand and eye. Hormones rage

Against the dying light, there but unnamed

To our ancestors. A maze of rules governs

The ungovernable, but we have

Our names still. Some words are knives.

She would burn my words with her breath

Her truth lying where it most protests.