Caution, I think, is the sound of the body

when it leans closer to the window.

You are at the market two miles away

walking past the first store at the second corner

hesitating between takoyaki and peanut cookie

when someone behind yells at you, Don’t stop

here! But you will stop at the flower cart and fight

for the freshest bouquet with a red-beret lady.

She will give you that face. It doesn’t matter.

You will win. You always win. Always come home

with your trophy flower and the funniest version

of the story. Yesterday, you won me the bluest tulips.

The day before? White lilies in a tall ceramic vase. 

I think, even at war times, you’d bring me flowers.

Drag out the raw bit of a scabbed tree

booming in the dirty space between the bricks and

name it Asper, Rare, or Acquire.

You’d make a good army doctor. Keep a bullet

pen in your front pocket while examining the film

of a fixated heart. Heard but forgive every fracture

in its metaphor. In some bad narratives, you’d die

a little. Hurt yourself also in a handful of thorns

so I suck your fingers every night. Because I am a sucker

for soft music, we’d return to that bombed lavender field

and listen to the sky slowly erasing itself. While waiting

you read the claw left by a baby beaver, reassure me

it is a quieted winter.

 

*“a raw bit of tree” comes from Gertrude Stein’s “Susie Asado.”