is a dragon
who eats love poems,
chews up their beginnings

and chars my pages
with the white li(n)es
and black letters of regret.

fall has not even
truly fallen, yet we stall out
like gas-starved engines:

sparks that stutter, flame,
consume. will winter find
us hitch-hiking home,

the snow melt sogging
through wet leaves, limp
socks? what can rev up for-

ever, catch us now on fire?
who will teach me, again,
to purr?