Why does your coldness towards love,
erode my heart fibres?
Why do you not suffer
like me, exiled to my solitary bed
where I await your coming?
Why is my love for you the prison
bars that will not allow me freedom
from hope that one day you will come
to me with a whole heart for love?

I am confounded to define the move
towards you that will not cause you to lift off
in defensive flight,
evading the very nesting place
here in my beating warm-blooded heart-body
you say even a whore would give you,
but you will not come down to mingle
with this whore's blood. Perhaps
the next move is not mine. Is that why

so many grandmothers stitched petit point,
spun ornate cotton webs
from the tips of crochet hooks,
adorned themselves with lace and manners,
in patterns scribed from their fingertips striving to say
what their voices were impotent to utter against
the blustery flight of their man's egocentricity,
while in white enamel chamber pots soaked
their bloodstained hearts and wombs?