This afternoon, I smell like a hungry gardener
a green thumb with a wart attached:
both perfumes of a rose are discernible. The soil, the falsetto sweet
reaching up onto your nostril fur as monkey bars
until it can scatter seeds, some wild and collected by fruit.

Mother asks why my knees are shaded.
I have been on them, I say, breathing life into green berries.

Free them from that cage, their wire straitjacket
and breed breed breed:
this afternoon, everything I touch will stay alive, including me.