Face to face across my kitchen table
and I with tears in my eyes am being forced to explain
why having a new sexual partner makes me nervous
because you cannot understand
what would make me nervous
about you
and I in my worry have made you sad.

I stood in full sunlight for you and was not visible.

I feel ungrounded. I used to say fallow but

now I think only barren.
The diagnosis is that I am flawed, deeply flawed, and
Mary Baker Eddy says the fault is in my soul.

The fault is in my soul, the rows
have been poorly plowed, the weeds
spring up in verdant abandon.

If a soul can be pruned, I missed that Sunday school class.
If my soul needs to be pruned, I have planted my feet
in the wrong garden.