by Jessica Kim
Issue: Ricercari (Summer 2012)
It’s a young day, a love day,
when dreams blanket the sunset of a much-too-there horizon,
a bright day, a light day, where the youth rise and the
soft whispers of the dying summer
meld with the bells of a windy dawn.
And it’s like a spell drawn by the seams of night,
like a shy wonderful kiss—
sped upon the blanket
of your vernal breath,
of fingers intertwined and promises bled into the
twilight of our waning hearts,
when the shadow of morrow stands but
a hairsbreadth away, a goodbye to say—
oh, don’t you?—like a bright red box of chocolate—
yes or no?—something like a dirty rotten mess
covered by your wonder
fully forgiving embrace,
in every petal that said yes and every breath
that brewed
new morning, with your face tattooed across
summer’s soft face and honeysuckle circles
dancing upon us with no way out of
for e v e r y
young bright love light day, when the fruit is ripe
and the harvest is plenty, when words speak truth,
and the sun goes down on anger.
And it’s falling
with the tides of a nascent sky we go, with
the shadow of ago but a hairsbreadth
too far away for goodbye and too near for the morrow.