Electric Pennies

Sinewy and kind,
it’s noon by dinnertime
as you unspool tales of Sigourney Weaver
sharing your mother’s lover in the backyard.

From behind,
I fall in love with the sight of you when I can’t see your eyes,
the laughter coming in shades of flamingo,
as we stand on solitary legs,
leaning into the interstellar spaces my world had previously never known.

The chorus written before my birth,
where mountains gouge the surface,
and the sea is a grainy dry towel discarded in the corner. Impenetrable. Profound.

Women with garbage can hats—ruby red—besmirch the throne where we lay ourselves down, the slumber ticking the clock back as the smoke plumes of missiles part my hair.

It grows to the floor.
I drown,
and it is there I uncover the glittering depths of a blue-green wood.

The sound of you so very loud.