A Glass Eye Finds Its Purpose

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.