She drank her coffee too
sweet
and drew herself
to the smell of new
pencil shavings,
like a pupil dilates in light,
telling itself to expand,
to drink up
more
and
more.

She fumbled
on old strands of her
self rising like mug steam
from poetry
she wrote only three months ago.
Wide-eyed,
reading "when
one leaves,
the past is a fetish"
in rounded, running letters
bubbling up over each other -
a gravy she found
herself constantly stirring.

And sunsets,
dashed with pink syrup,
are a passion
('passion' being her
'word' - a skin-colored tattoo,
a branded prayer, an incanted torch)
Sunsets.
Sour golden orange laced
with strawberry wine.
Bittersweet.
Passionate.

Her.