syrup cellphone 

i cup the sweet glob to try
to hear you. we were never really
long distance, were we? we were 
two veins of sugar dug from
the ant-ridden earth. i stand out
in the third day of rain. 
i want to the water to eat our
tether. let me be a shovel maiden 
in the silky dusk. instead, the syrup 
comes back. every faucet a cellphone
ready to make me talk about hunger.
as a kid sometimes when no one 
else was home i would take a spoonful
of maple syrup & fill my mouth.
let my head ring. gnats flocked 
from all around the house. my rotting
peach head. their thumbs full of children.
i still sleep in drains. think of the nights
when you called me over & over.
left voicemails. each a footprint 
in the mud. driving to a lover's house,
i would call you & leave message two.
do you ever wonder what would happen
if we had tried to eat it all? sick from sugar
maybe we would have turned 
into an ant hill. spilled from out throats.
found the queen & fed her too. 
i still always think i can empty myself
into the slow kind of liquid. take 
the shape of whatever kindness 
comes close. i see people who have regular
phones. i see them call their lovers.
facetime in a mall parking lot. each time zone
is a rosary bead. i would count them.
there you were with a bucket
at the throat of a tree.