1.  
  2. Sometimes I prefer not to untangle it.
  3. I prefer it to remain disorganized,
  4.  
  5. because it is richer that way
  6. like a certain shrubbery I pass each day on Reba Street
  7.  
  8. in an unimpressive yard, in front of a house that seems unoccupied:
  9. a chest-high, spreading shrub with large white waxy blossoms—
  10.  
  11. whose stalks are climbed and woven through simultaneously
  12. by a different kind of vine with small magenta flowers
  13.  
  14. that appear and disappear inside the maze of leaves
  15. like tiny purple stitches.
  16.  
  17. The white and purple combination of these species,
  18. one seeming to possibly strangle the other,
  19.  
  20. one possibly lifting the other up — it would take both
  21. a botanist and a psychologist to figure it all out,
  22.  
  23. —but I prefer not to disentangle it,
  24. because it is more accurate.
  25.  
  26. My ferocious love, and how it repeatedly is trapped
  27. inside my fear of being sentimental;
  28.  
  29. my need to control even the kindness of the world,
  30. rejecting gifts for which I am not prepared;
  31.  
  32. my apparently inextinguishable notion
  33. that I am moving toward a destination
  34.  
  35. —I could probably untangle it
  36. yet I prefer to walk down Reba Street instead
  37.  
  38. in the sunlight and the wind, with no mastery
  39. of my feelings or my thoughts,
  40.  
  41. purple and ivory and green, not understanding what I am
  42. and yet in certain moments remembering, and bursting into tears,
  43.  
  44. somewhat confused as the vines run through me
  45. and flower unexpectedly.