The Taxidermist

Forget-me-nots press

purple-blue pledges into

the whites of my dress. I want

that to be enough dying 

for today. You ask why the cows 

won’t come home, why the fields 

will not go to seed. I say it’s because

they are starving, and you are always 

late to dinner. I wanted you 

freshly thawed, pursed lips hungry, 

like waiting to be stuffed—but you 

are always late to bedtime; I grow vicious 

from the waiting, from angling twilight 

in your absence. When dawn 

cracks over the rim of the hills, it scrambles 

your excuse of an excuse and I return back

to the field with shiny new shears and 

a fresh appetite, love of throats, which I harvest

irascibly—a little too-green, caught rasping

on their own buds. I’ll try them out after 

dark, when the shadows crawl with the

ripeness of bodies, mute and begging 

to be mounted.