I don't like looking at true things close up.
It hurts.

They're too bright,
they throw light on
square and many-eyed things
I did not know were there.
They flash like teeth
like swearwords as you
speak over your coffee.
About the things you've done, the people

I am naïvely uncomfortable.
I shiver inside my pale skin
and avert my eyes
from the whiteness at the edge of yours.
Splitting from beneath the tall dark shapes
like lightning in my garden
as we sit on a checked tablecloth
underneath the night.

Thoughts I throw like clover buds
on the grass around.
A faerie circle to protect me
from those tall things, those high
block-like men.

I don't even want a match
to count their many eyes.