Gifts

My gift
is to read lucidly and impress the elderly
in two languages
and win at
small insignificant things
like not pulling the doors that say PUSH and predicting rain.

Your gift
is beauty
I would kill you
if I knew I could steal your gift that way.

I read men and women whose gift is
to write like mirrors;
unravel body and soul, make and unmake
dawn and dusk between two covers
I would burn every single letter they wrote forever
if I knew I could steal their gifts that way.

I know of someone
whose gift is impeccable health of mind
who is alive despite knowing that
his name will be on a gravestone somewhere someday
I would unleash maladies on the world
Pestilence and plague, dusk, eternal dusk
if I knew I could steal his gift that way.

This
is the kind of person that I am:
shameless twat, servant to the vest
who wants the dawn and the dusk, winter and summer,
your gifts and his, all the gifts, greedy, yes, won't stop--

luckily someone gave me a gift of paper and pen
so I lie still in my little lair, buried
in jealousies disguised as longings
my desire endless
my limbs unmoving
my blessings uncounted,
scheming and scheming.