outside girlhood's window, already beginning
to die as I clip them into vases, purple and white
everywhere, full blown lilacs glorious in their
brief bending. Don't forget the love-drunk bees
so stuffed with passion they topple down the chimney,
crawl on the living room carpet to die. Listen: do you hear
their faint whirring? See the gypsy fortuneteller
in her glass cage, illuminated only by quarters?
She jerks to life, flurry of red and gold scarves,
enormous baubles on her fingers. She deals a card
with your secret, are you passionate, indifferent,
or cold? See her grow dark? It's the new century,
love, and those poems I once knew are lost to me now.
I remember a smudge of sentences, line breaks
all wrong, but each true to its own fragrance.
Now I'm writing love poems--should I ask the obvious
questions? I'm drifting on the edge of my new
black dress, slashed low to my electric cleavage,
an underskirt of red tulle. How it shivers, so lavish
someone must say beloved. Perhaps I spend
all day in bed, my lovely skin, beautiful still,
tangled in a sheet of passion. Will you write
a couple of lines on a card, slip it under the door?
Just a word or two like oh love or finally, you.