[Y]ou lay down your arms
like flowering mines

to conqueror me home.

-- Audre Lorde

And if you had called me
By my assassin's name
Cooed it like a vowel
It might have been more
Than a time of trespasses

But it was an era of arrivals
(No, your arms were an era
Lain down like Slavic landmines
Spitting up flowers of conquest)
It was a parade of visitations

For I left no warden to halt you
At the doorstep of my navel
But see how I now creep back
Between the hidden plumes
To meet a house I am unable to ambush

Unable to pass without eyeing
The walls and windows that have held
You longer than these constrictable arms
Spoiler of hunters, all those fraudulent days
You read to the sun was a testimony

To your acheless power
Somehow already squandering
My prowling under the sapphire canopy
You, the stutter inside my steady trigger,
Hear me now: I have yet surrendered to your arms