Ashtray Mouth
I swear, she makes me want to change my name.
When she puts on her face, I understand
what the world is for. She never makes demands
because she knows there’s no such thing as time.
Mornings, over coffee, while I slowly
assemble fragments of my consciousness,
she talks to me about her dreams. I kiss
her with my ashtray mouth, then in my holey
socks and wrinkled shirt I sit and stare
at starlings in the half-dead tree outside;
I watch them gather twigs, try to decide
which twigs are best for nests and whom to share
them with. And when at last I look away,
she’s still here, though April has gone and so has May.
