On My Blindside

You will see me through green eyes, sleep caked
in night shifts, drowning in your abandoned
slumber, reluctantly given. You’ll make
the tea I’ll wake to cold, love chipped handles

left on the bedside like a bruised given gift.
You will see me through green eyes, blinded
by the Thames shattered sun, landing kisses
on the pier of my face. Somehow your kindness

pierces the taciturn tug of bed sheets
over my body-shy disgrace. You will see me
through green eyes, when my love retreats
to empty places we don’t need, marquees

filled with tradition. It is in my strangled
silences, when affection has run ragged
on my blindside like a bull red wrangled
street, that I love you with the most savage

green I have. I see you through eyes green
reflected better in your mirrors, truer
than my cleanest glass. I will see between
and over me, but never ever through you.

– Emily Kate Groves