It starts like threading yarn in a needle threading the vein
turning red pulling vocal cord blood and muscle

the things that grow in you like algae
blooming on a lake as blue as agate or turquoise—

do you want to be that lake? Maybe the granite beneath
it? The pull of iron the streams turning to rust?

You become flotsam on the shore:
driftwood pine needles blush herb and sunrise gore

Painting the shorelines infrared. Oh to be that red
threading vision with bullfights butterflies and tongues

tomatoes apples roses constellations filling with
mars— stay together as flames do, as petals on poppies

and geraniums as pairs of garnets studded in-ear
as coals in blacksmith forge as fire in the sky

as the cross at the back of a black widow. Nothing is
as beautiful as the bleeding, the freckle of scratch

your arms, the exposure and saturation
in each eye like a pool of dark water.

– Amanda Stovicek