Love in the Time of Climate-Changing Psychobiology

You're frigid. 

I am a desert rose.
Play, repeat:

I'll listen to the songs, but

Cognitively dissuade reason.

My ears won't hear 

Clashing sounds.

Reasons, bitter almonds 

Cyanide in the brain;

Atrophied sea-horses;

We are murdered incrementally

By stress.

Stress, the little pressures as

We take on more and more,

And share less,

Yes:

Only winter smiles upon those

Who are cold.

And now, it is spring.

I must not wait on a decision already made

Love is a drug; every time we touch 

Oxytocin, vasopressin; and more. 

There is violence in deliberate asynchrony.

We share evenings of hope

Until they are evenings of injury.

Aren't we healers? 

Let us not breed despair. 

I will say that there is something 
oddly self-aware

In studying operant conditioning,

Whilst being operantly conditioned

By your hot-then-cold stares,

Agile fingers; meticulously meted out words.

Indecisive affection. 

This is chemical, as chemical as 

Every grain of sand and flake of 

tightly squeezed ice.

Desert rose, frigid oak,

Neither is a stranger to emotions. 

I forget that even as

The desert sun scorches,

The desert night has frozen 

Many a thirsty soul.

And so a strange attraction lies 

Yes, it lays within me

The dishonest draw.

It's an easy delusion:

Our icy words aren't so cold when we

Share our blankets, sweaters, scarves.

I'll calm myself

For this is a forgiving world: 

with truthful lies, and good thieves;

And endless seas, 

Which give rise 
to not just 

the desert rose,

but also the frosty ice. 

Heart of a Woman

Have I yet,

The heart of a woman?
Quietly-tugging-question:
Lurches, like my stomach as the train
Pulls in, relentlessly
Station after station. 

The heart of a woman,
The calloused heels of a traveller,
The tousled hair of a lover,
The massaged skin of a nymph,

Have I yet
A mind of my own?

The penitent thief:
A good man,
Like most others
Unknown. Invisible helpers
The machine runs, its cogs
are remembered, but not until
They fall out. Have I yet, 

The heart of a woman?
With soulful eyes to see
All those repentant robbers? 

Have I yet
The gritty tenacity
To confess completely?
The hands of a pure lover,
Midas touch to
Blessedly transform all sinful lives
The heart of
A woman who is
compelling.

The heart of a woman,
Her bleeding conversion,
distorted self-images:
Have I yet,
The power to create life from nothing?
The capacity for such astounding love?

Have I yet,
The heart of a woman?
Grown from the glitter studded, acrylic sweat
of a big-sister, a gentle teacher, a smiling scolder:
And what if I do?

Shall I be a specimen 

Or set precedents?

And how can I count and thank:

All the almost lovers,

All the hands which shared their warmth

and helped me circulate the truth?

Those rueful souls,
Whose eyes saw me from their corners
and passing glances,
With sufficient distance to see the metabolized me; 

When I only saw up-close, 

as a parent who cannot see the new inches of child-bones

The little girl I was originally, 

with a little voice, 

wondering impatiently:

if she has yet a heart of a woman. 

I must also thank,
The lovers of whom I

have meticulous count
For leading my growth and sharing
their food. I don't think
Dinner is a coincidental tradition of courtship.
Some lovers have nurtured me, even if not to see,
but equally importantly, to be
a welcoming home to 

the heart of a woman.

Yes,
I think I do have one:
a heart of a woman.
A soul that is grown,
no, not fully,
but certainly enough to belong
to a woman.