and every year I still yearn to write them—the leaves,
signature picture of beauty
inevitable
and stock as a sunset.
The truth? I took a screw-
driver to your window,
almost dropped your AC
unit two stories to concrete.
The herb garden
is dying.
The stinkbugs are finding ways inside.
You’re trekking the opposite half of the country
trying
to trace the azimuth to a future
you can believe in
and I’m thinking of my ma-
ternal line,
the sex-specific cancers I stand
to inherit:
uterine,
ovarian,
breast.
My body is not inevitable. I picture
it in forty years,
gutted,
unsexed to survive,
my hands famishing for the feel my twenty-
something self.
You mail me a letter on your best
stationary.
I stare at the bathroom mirror,
snap polaroid nudes.
Season of what we have not
yet,
and what we’re scared to lose.
