Buttercup.

You walk closer to me, through buttercups, snapping one from its stem. Buttercup, can I trust you? Luminous, your army of sweetness and invitation. Your touch between the thin air of your skin and my skin, now giving to me my only desire and understanding of sensation. I drift, buttercup.

Buttercup, can I bask in the place you sleep in. In sun’s giving warmth, or, should I run from you, the second I have the chance. Can I talk to you about things silent and still, ugly and raw, sweet and naive, found and lost. Can I remember you in fondness, buttercup, while looking through windows barred and small, the place where real meaning is not always on the surface of words. I see you, and just past your yellow, I see the sparkle of a red wind chime twirling in air. I remember what sparkle is, I am not gone. A temporary cell in haunted and locked spaces of footsteps, and creaky wood floors. One, two, three… There it is, always on three, from the left. And a lamp faking to be a moon, with shadow chasing light across the ceiling, around 9 o’clock.

Dare I follow you, savior. To greener grass, and an endless meadow of love, where my only understanding is from expired library books you sneak in, and vintage television tubes. When you handed me a buttercup through impenetrable iron rods, to tell me tonight we will run, “Trust me, Neshama sheli.” And your last instruction, “9 o’clock.”

My eyes open to your eyes looking down, “Ma… What you thinking about?”

Excerpt from
Between love poems and solitude.