There is still time
to grow Momma’s high-
throated laugh, her prickly
skin as if to say the world
may not touch me
here and here and here,
I do not understand
I have been made to grow
into a tree with color—
pink blossoms shrinking
only once I confess how
I let November touch me—
until I’ve already done so. Then
again, are a few colorful months
all I have to offer? I didn’t
spot the telltale signs of sin
until they were already snaking
up my back. There is no color,
I’ve realized, I cannot capture
for my own pleasure, no quiet
man I cannot be. I am truthfully
barren until I ask to be filled:
with night, if you please—
and June, and night, with a pinch
of dark. Then I am so skintight
or would the correct word
be skinfree? Because I am standing
behind part of my body
and the night-wind gallops
and laughs and gallops away
with the rest. So dark, I doubt
there will ever come another
morning, and it doesn’t come
until I’ve already given
all my trust to the trees, though
really, every body is the same,
so what is there to protect? Even when
there is more to my life
than a postcard of its season—
there is only a flash
followed by the faithless
dark. The sky goes
limp, the night a dress
to be worn. Across my face
a single lightning rod remains.