Tongue daps vinegar,
and your face winched,
as if offended,
as if death was a butterfly
fetching nectar from you,
but your soul has never resided
any body other than yours.

Yogurt is enough
to make you scoff,
sandwiches the same,
you shudder at the sight
of my teeth flensing fat
off a rind and the cream
of hardened tallow on steamed
rice.

Your lunch box comes with
this world’s gravy,
mine comes with
I-am-lucky-that-I-am-here
kind of deal.
Mine comes with bricks
my scrawny frame has to bear,
mine comes with my mama’s
expectations that I need to
build a better road for my siblings
and I to walk on.
Mine is more edible than
what papa keeps in his belly.

You have a lunch box,
I have lunch, now go eat.

I speak not of the sun neither speak to her for the winter it has left in my care. My conversations with the cold snap and the polar vortex had gone stale.

The sun and I had our falling out and if these words should find their way to her doorstep, let her know I don’t miss her warmth. I don’t leap out of the bed to tug the curtain and let her silver light fill my room and let the motes dance in her rays like I used to.

I shudder at her supple shadow swirling, flowing and flitting about, and the halo she wears petrifies me. Her pestilential disposition burns through my walls fortified with years of heartaches. For these, we must part ways.

There is a constellation that knows you well, a piece of heaven that saw you take your first steps,
a clusters of stars that watched you fall asleep and hushed you when you dreaded the burst of darkness overhead.
They knew your story.
They sang your lullabies.
They fished out the moon out of the lake and washed off its impurities so you can hold soft light in your hands.
They braved the rabid bites of winter so they can fill your pockets with the sun.
They’ve always wanted you to sail North, away from the wasteland polluted with emptiness, upstream in a kayak, where the lakes sing your name.
Until like most stars, you dipped your toes in the pond and burnt out.
The stars they call you—reignite once again.

I have so often wondered why the rose in the yard kept being a rose when everyone else is a dandelion,
or why it would recite light when midnight is still in the land’s arms.

When the spring rages,
and the rain dry of its songs,
when the colors are famished
of their sky,
when the stars abed fail to rise,
this rose is unfazed.
ever flamboyant on the stage,
gliding gracefully on ebony ice,
this rose has a will of a cactus.

Of colors born
from depths of human sight?
with fingers taking scuffing steps
and their raspy breath
for years of yearless quest,
what gold weigh with a
master’s piece made destitute
by passion wants?

Visions mothering hues and strokes,
in blood, tears, and sweat hardening on the canvas,
from pockets that solely dreams of bread to sit on the table,
would they find the worth?

Lo, when the hours covet sleep,
but the soul in the soul lay wide awake,
and night and day bleed on each other and the yearn chafes his bones no end to be under promise to the craft.

“Apologies, but into the word art, simplify not,
nor of labels you set a perilous climb to a wicked peak take refuge.
For whilst eyes, in liberty, take pleasure in mocking outcomes,
the road on the way there taxed the soul flesh pound per pound.”

Nakedly bottled.
Capturing bursting seasons
here and now.

Life, delicate in its notes,  
the top notes,
lithe as youth,
citrus and bloom,  
ever briefly,
recondite pleasure,
a suppliance of time
a rush that fades away.  

Heart notes,
the flesh of our days, unfold—  
warm spices, florals, deeper and continues to exude as winter winds careless breath.

In the middle years, the scent sits and blares and mellows—a steady pulse of sandalwood and musk.  

Sultry as the scent may have lingered,
flirtatious colors in the breeze’s hair
the base notes come,
the earthier tones,  
amber and resin,
heavier on the air,  
decays a final wisp
until faint on the skin.

A memory is born.