I believe in your lighted balcony
as I have no saint, no savior.
I believe your roses, calendulas,
buttercups, begonias, carnations.
I can smell the lilies from here,
the impatiens. Do you know
that golden string of little stars around
your kitchen window guides
a soul adrift
as you bow to the sink,
watering can in hand?
Is that why you hung them there? Is that why
the peonies, gardenias, camellia?
Only in my grasping
selfishness would I claim another’s light
my beacon, wring meaning from plastic constellations.
You are a woman like all women, Persephone.
Is there a man in there
who beats you? A grudge
you nourish, a bruise you cherish?
I see your hips and know the cruelty
with which the world meets majesty
and cry and cry and cry.
Do the marigolds remind you to smile?
Does the lilac’s sweetness slow your thoughts,
tell you to savor
the wind on your lips,
the lush radiance of your lighted oasis,
your world apart from the world, an eden
of your own kind hands?
If I was God, I’d take it all back, weeping
on my knees. I love you, Persephone. I love
you without envy
through my shivering, kniving sobs.
Only because I love
you can
I bring myself
to turn
away, to spare you
the gasping violence of
observation.
Persephone, Persephone,
please dream pansies
enough for both of us,
as the balcony door glints sideways
silver,
and I ask myself once more
how to lie
beside a man
who feels, I believe,
the worst I’ve thought of myself
is true.
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