I didn't say love

It is Thursday and I am tired of walking this rose garden,

Pricking my cheekbones with a new shade of green each day.

I have three dreams each night and my favorite one starts with a daybreak;

It ends with you. In between, there is a rivers drought, a mother

Weeping, and so much more room for smell than sight. No matter,

Time stops, I wait. I know now that wanting is much worse than hunger.

Three dreams, no sleep. In my least favorite,

I can only just make out the gold specks in your eyes before the sun sets

And the night is new. I walk down the hallway

Then up, the dust rises then settles, time passes

like moonlight and when I put out the fire I leave no embers;

I know now that this is always the fate of a woman in gold.

There’s another where the edge of the road peels,

And bleeding under the sunrise, I look right through

the lilies under me. This is a very old story— that race for the end of

the rainbow, your pulse hot under my palm, not much room to lean;

Just an inch through the cold air

and the whole thing would go.

This is a very old story and God knows it is superstition that saves, in the end,

But there is a lot I have to tell you,

And so little time; this is why we had to start at dawn. It’s all over now, but

you know me, I forget forgiveness— here, there is only denim

and the beat of his heart. I can almost think of it like it was then.

In the morning, with the rust on our hinges,

the salt splashing in, cheeks so ripe with blush that the whole thing blurred.

You know me, there is only one thing that matters—

The grass gray, the blue nights stacking like dusty books

The air like sugar, thick with desperation. Here is the difference between piety and

precarity— I could taste the salt, I could see the sun.

It is superstition that stabs, in the end, but there is a lot I have to tell you,

And so little time, so we will start at dawn:

I could feel every freckle on my skin and he smelled

like earth after rain