Lily of the Valley and Bleeding Hearts

You’ve got me like ivy
climbing,
choking the walls
of my common sense
and strangling the fences
surrounding my will.

I’m Lily of the Valley,
the leaves and the bulbs,
and you are the compounds
that make me beautiful enough
to be deadly.

You’re the outstretched vines
of bleeding hearts
that look gentle enough
from a distance,
the watercolor petals hang
like soldiers on monkey bars.

But I am the trellis
that fell in the storm,
and I may not tell you why
I failed to get back up.