do you have
                    scars / if not the hurt is mostly imagined.

slash of blood against snow and who would wish for a child
"red as blood"—pretty words,
but the daughter suffers.

When I was young I loved ____, now
I love ____, and in between
                         salt air, eclipse, the tinny rust of each year's puncture.

"As white as snow as red as blood"—I'd include more news

                         if I knew it. For she was a thin little thing, 
hardly more than a peep coming from that carmine mouth—

                         yes ma'am, I'd like to bite the shiny apple, please.
         A disease will fill the airwaves until spring and then a girl

and then a war. "And black as ebony." Mother,
you had your wishes, all three. And then you die and she

         is running through midnight woods while 
                  the most beautiful woman in the world 
         salts and peppers the heart & lungs she leaves behind.