05.03.16 • night, far from the sun
No matter what I do I can’t get to sleep
like great greenhouses filled with long-leafed specimens
of such a deep jeweled green
I’m convinced they’re not real.
Your eyes, I think – for a moment –
before I remember they are called brown.
If honey and almonds bathed in pure sunlight and saltwater
You see me approach and you give me
the benefit of recognition.
Italicized, you’d call it:
I can’t stop thinking of your neckline
and the name that no one calls you but which I have fallen in love with
and shared one of your Spotify playlists with me.
In my head I’ve taken you to the ocean
with a Mexican blanket and an old-fashioned picnic basket:
one of the wicker ones with a hinged lid.
I thought this writing would help me sleep
but without your body next to mine,
my mind wanders these orange-hued heavy nights
in search of a replacement,
traversing to foreign cities with their glimmering lights.
Only, like me trying to navigate my way home, alone,
to high peaks across the desert,
it wanders without success.