Under and Between

Sometimes things can smolder,
like campfires stamped out too hastily
or emotions left for dead and thought long extinguished
or the corpse of any fire whose embers still glow dangerously in secret.

Sometimes things do not stay where you put them,
and like a ball rolling downhill into the street,
part of you runs after them as a child would, too excited and not looking,
and the rest stares like the mother from the doorstep,
    frozen, mute, and fearing.

Sometimes things grow without you sowing them
so irrational and shocking when you trip upon them --
and like finding a beehive in your coffee tin,
there's a sudden swarming around your chest
all buzzing honey and golden yellow sting.

And sometimes others are this fickle too,
and you swallow their indecision like a burning coal --
one so black and rough and hot you'd scream but for pride,
one that sits in your tender belly like an entrenched parasite,
like a gluttonous aristocrat feeding on the sinecure of your body.

But you go on.