Thaw

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The splurge of cherry

blossoms before their time

at the frost edge of spring

waiting for the watery pink light

to smoke out the frozen thistles of winter.

Soon, a bit of mint will grow wild

alongside the gravel roads,

and the smell of my grandfather’s pipe

will spill from the mist

across the gleaned fields

and take my arm.

Memories thaw out and trickle

in a flow of brackish water.

A vanishing into ghost woods

without even a scratch of sun.

Time, always time, tugs

on the evening like wind.

I practice a raw

unraveling as I listen to words flowering soft

sung by my mother in the corner,

and the shadows have yet to do

their slow seeping

into the sidewalks—

I am not ready

to wake in someone else’s body,

fitted with bones not my own.

But time, always time,

with eyes that dance like sparks

across luminous skulls,

breaks my heart in the grass.