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.