Thanatophobia

"Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me..."
                       ~ Janice N. Harrington


I've been reading about transformation
again: all those women who writhed

on a hillside then looked upon their own 
limbs scaled over with bark; or their hair 

fanned out and leafing with green— How,
in the throes of an agony (some god in hot

pursuit), they cried out: and this trans-
formation was the answer they were given.
 
But what if the girl was running 
away from a different sort of god, one

who didn't want her body nor her capture 
but only wanted to make her pay for 

the audacity of drinking from the cup 
of her own desire. Every night, her mouth 

is the mirror on which petals of breath
rise and fall on the damp pillows.

Like her, all I want now is to stay,
embraced, inside that cove of air.