Two White Flags

You coddle silence
Pull on repression’s sleeve
Rub the back of needles dropping
Into a volcano of affect
Time just napping in denial

Etiquette sleeps with monsters
In your handbook
Of resentment
Now you ask
For renewal in the flash
Of a dying bulb

Like a green hopper and his fly
You swallow compassion
Just like the repeated whips of youth
Stains--still wet, still defiled
I know the injury
The noose
The strange apology after the thump
So I surrender two white flags
To our childhood leash