Shortcomings

...
...

It's dark gray but you show tonight--skin black
spirit of time sometimes
replaces embers, charred cuticles,
to recollect a day where auburn light once rested.

I found you crouched behind the fan ferns,
and lean-tos, and it.

Always it which rested heavy in my palm
and refused to grow--how seedling
looks as a virgin: small, barren, incomplete--
it.

It which destroys hopes budding,
and feeds morning chances of rebirth

with vice.