Offerings in pencil stroke.
Slate pines & aluminum hickory trunks
buckle under pressure
to reclaim more than a lost moment
but she accepts them.
Close reads lines & curves.
Walks her fingers
over indigo and fern to forcep the round
wax of carnation pink. Grey fawn shimmers into
many splendored unicorn.

Bow your head without meaning it.
Late prayers leaping
from your tongue at the slightest
nod of consent. She’s not yours.
These are not mornings
you share with someone who once
was inevitable.
The bottom of a Superman
mug rings the slip you
haven’t signed in ballpoint pen to seal permission.
A month from now this hour
won’t have existed except to remind your
memory of its distended
shadow.

Our natural state is fumbling.
Mothers are in sun stains
pillowing under a bottom lid. Infinitesimal
rupture of a dimple.
A half-held sigh.
You’re in the red light’s uneven
blink. The waning
sputter of an electric kettle. A saint
a saint a saint a cunt a cunt a calculating cunt.
The fairies aren’t gone. She lifts the mineral
from your eyes. They’re hiding
with the ghosts. Tumbles
out of frame. Tuck & roll. Tuck
& roll & scrape &
burn & gnash & claw. You

outline more—
craggy canyons, one eyed bucks
& starfish. Small furies
her hands.
Splashing life. Washing brilliant
artificial white in slopes of red-orange
and aqua marine.
The countertop her skylining vista.
Your mirage at the edge
of itself ready to collapse around your senses
what was almost true.
There is no ribbon in her hair. There is no bottom
to the ravine. With each press of color
salt rocks on both sides steady
their erosion.

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Image: “Sidewalk Expression” by Alex J. Tunney