Even in love, permafrost. Cellared autumn against incipient winter, scarlet glass,
a blaze of coral against velvet night. Exhale your prayers, visible breath,
take off your gloves. Settle here in the earth next to me and taste the chill.
How deep my roots here and still reaching for your hands, my refuge in rosemary.
I want them sunk to the wrist at the harvest moon
and seeking, I want them tangled in my hair to unearth me, turning my face
to the heat that lights my skin. Season-agnostic I tend the shape of you, held close,
awaiting convergence. There is always space for you in my garden bed.
Some flowers need the cold to bloom; you are the only warmth I need.
I have no heart for any other--let me be your shelter when you seek the sea,
where the currents catch their breath at your every whispered word. Lay me
more than six feet down, what's left of me lit against the ocean floor,
burning wires wound tight in my marionette limbs, tethered where weeping
Tethys rages still. Sing me from the deep, call me from the catacombs
where dawn never breaks, see me tattooed in night skies and hung with pearls.
I am only foliage, dark under the veiled moon, bright petals on the verge.
I dream of you while I sleep through summer, lost in salt water. I will wait for you,
tend my garden thalassic, where the stars are always sharp enough to cut us free.
