star

the air tastes like honey and promise 

sticky with the scent of blooming jasmine 

and freshly cut grass that crunches beneath bare feet 

the sky drips blue 

stretching wider every afternoon 

your birthday was halo-lit nights and cigarettes in sugar cakes—

melted icing smeared over the tips of flames snuffed out in the dark.

you asked for a songbird, said your lungs were burnt with apocalypse dust

I'm six on the living room floor -

the pink album the pink album I chant -

dad puts the Supremes on the record player, the jacket handed to me -

pink, with three of the most beautiful women I've ever seen -

It’s morning in Paris, 

and the city still sleeps, 

though the sun has long risen 

and the cat has long been stretched in the light 

that washes over the quiet courtyard. 

I love buttondowns

White buttondowns

Crisp white collars

Buttoned up

I feel real now

for a friend

i picture you some days – a utensil in one hand and your cheek

in the other, gazing somewhere in the distance as your