I emerge from a room of candles and coconut oil, my body

no longer mine, but covered with lilac layers

of saliva and ripened sweat.

I am pink stone dissolved in olives,

the kind of color that trembles, a glass of chianti, the wine

in my hand touched by other hands that also touch earthly things.

Under my feet the breath of ancient nations and every size and shape

of mushroom on my tongue, a blessing for the overtures of my body

and its beauty and where it leads me. I opened my whole life to find

this quintessence of the sacred and the senseless. Still

the crows cross this road on orange feet,

at night a blue fire burns over the city.

The grass   darkened still   bends to the wind,

and I will find the desert at the end of a road I know by heart.

**title a line from Emily Dickinson’s I heard a Fly buzz (465)

last line from poet Joanna Chen