Here’s what I eat in your absence:
meals which taste like orange peels and bitter rinds
wild fruit overripe with the stink of fat
flavor that hangs at the side of your cheek when the myth of love goes sour
Here’s the topography of my tongue, in case you forget:
meetings gone south, packed suitcase, diner dash
lemon candy crumpled wrapper, cherry gum on shoe
tangy thin coins heavying jeans, misremembered
When I sleep here’s all I dream:
nine weeks of golden summer where we sit at that old table
next to mud lakes we catch swings, kids gulping moss water
and the rest of time never finds
this aurum jam cupful
