Moving On. (Monday.) You Made of Everything.

You live in time, too fast in the hot flutter of daylight. Stand still! I say as I braid your hair. But you won't and the camera, it flattens your face and there is always something that I cannot reach. (Stand still. My words thin in your air, like shouting into an ocean the sounds fall back on me, full of joy and regret like a photograph.) I like to hold your face, look deep into your ears, open your mouth to see your molars, turn you this way and that; you move away, or maybe it is me who is receding.

I watch my words from where I sit on the couch, hairbrush in hand, strands of you caught between my fingers. You laugh and twist away so I braid what I have of you with what I have of me, plaits of a necklace twisted chain of daisies meant one day for your throat, smooth as corn tassel, my girl of wheat warm and sweet, of seaweed and starfish, exclamation point of fog.

At night I watch you sleep with a hunger that slices my breasts into slabs.