You are looking at me

Your face nailed

To the wall

Inquisitive

A god vivisecting

My demeanor

Your lips

Sharp as razors

Tell me

More than they ever did

When alive.

The transparent soil

Of your cheeks

The scorched bronze arch

Of your back

Deprived of its lymph

With decades of farming,

Decades of anger.

I cannot read the thoughts

Stuck in your shrub-covered fence

Of wrinkles,

Carved in the brambles

Of your conspicuous nose.

Is that an orchard

My spade was never able to

To till or to reach?

An orchard whose fruit grows

 Silently

As the shuffling

Of your slippers

In the evening

Words are coming hard now

From such a cold distance

Like the spirit of wine

Meant to revive

A disappointing Christmas Day.

They cannot lay a cloth

For a further picnic

Among the vines

You planted.

Not yet, at least.