The Secret Garden

I was ill, lying on my bed of old papers, when you came with white rabbits in your arms; and the doves scattered upwards, flying to mothers, and the snails sighed under their baggage of stone . . . Now your tongue grows like celery between us: Because of our love-cries, cabbage darkens in its nest; the cauliflower thinks of her pale, plump children and turns greenish-white in a light like the ocean’s. I was sick, fainting in the smell of teabags, when you came with tomatoes, a good poetry. I am being wooed. I am being conquered by a cliff of limestone that leaves chalk on my breasts.