Woefully behind on NaPoWriMo, but still making an attempt

My friend Lavina and I drove out to listen to Maureen Alsop read in Claremont last Sunday. Always a treat, because Maureen is such an ethereal reader, and the Claremont series is full of friends. They were in a pinch setting up, so I found myself offering to help and was handed a knife and several blocks of cheese. Sounds simple enough, but I got a little carried away, cutting it all down into funky little cubes...

Lavina and I have been challenging each other to write, coming up with our own prompts. We've only done it twice now: The first was a sonnet challenge, and this second one was a little more fluid, only needing to incorporate a color, a tree, and a verb implying movement. I've been dying to write, although I'm still generally swamped and haven't really felt I could spare the time.

Here's the new, unrevised, as-yet-untitled draft:

I awoke this morning to a crashing pain:
A heart as yellow as a sunflower pinned to my chest.
Each petal a spoke on a wheel, yearning.
I pulled the brake and it bled sullen birds.

Your hands hold the birds like my breath.
The oak lay in a thousand pieces at our feet.
Rays of sky pummel down like buckshot
as the leaves turn upon themselves like lace misgivings.

You cannot gift the horse. I cannot tell you not to.
Tectonics could drift, my own beneath yours.
There are no assurances. The weather hoards
a whole continent of consonants.

I have all the vowels.
Yet, still there is only this pathetic flower.