RogueAgent

Yellow barrette, you were inside the house.
You were inside a dark drawer, inside the dark

house. Sometimes, your friend was indigo,
an indigo crayon beside you in the drawer.

But you were never a friend of my hair, nor was
the crayon a friend of my hand, of paper and motion.

What would the crayon have drawn but indigo skies
flown through by indigo birds, and somewhere

beneath them, the bluest fire burning to tell only
ashes are made of feathers of the feeling hand.

What did the hand feel, the hand not my own?
It went inside, like a yellow barrette into

an oaken drawer, like a crayon into a crevice.
Draw me a canyon. Call it a howl of love.

Pretend love is moving through a girl locked in
a house with only a hand, a crayon, a barrette,

to fill the canyon. Little barrette, what happened
when the game began was a terror past unfastening.

I knew you meant nothing, could not unstiffen,
nor unhurt. And the hand kept moving, moving.

The canyon kept calling for an eraser to blot out
the indigo of a thousand moonless nights.

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