I came in a bottle, a prize like the worm
in the mezcal you swallowed
in lieu of an apology. Isn't it lovely
how I complement your fragile face?

My gold-flecked chestnut iris is
a perfect match to your
gold-flecked chestnut iris, but
I fail to redden when your mood flags,

or when the nervous field-mouse beating
of your heart makes sleep impossible,
or when drinking deepens it
and you awake a little damaged.

I know I'm no great help. I fail to flinch
at the fist that brought me here, raised
in your blind periphery. I fail to see
how I can be of any use to you except

as a decoy. . . to draw away his jabs,
his right hooks and uppercuts, to blur
his wild uneven blows, to lure
your twin ballistic voices, the slurred

epithets you swap, like broken teeth
spat against a wall, to finally bring
the rising, untreatable fever of your love
into the umbra where everything's equal.