she is there in the honeysuckle brambles
asking to draw a central line
beauty is gentle beneath her feet
and love is woven lace-tight alongside
thinly tendoned ankles
i am the man who found her there
deeply white beneath the fragile shade
asking me in silence:
//who could i be
but who could, or would, i be
when we washed off this dirt
and she left me, alone, and grown up?
she keeps the beat-up dream folded and crushed
for bright bursting afternoons slow in the polka-dot clouds
and anxiously remembering why
over, back in the shade
of another honeysuckle bramble,
my brothers and i in multitude, frozen in evening lounge
we glance at each other
smell licorice
anise
chlorine
and think about winter lights, fences,
and when we had the dream tucked in our backpocket