Strawberry Moon

In dreams I find you willing

open as a June magnolia

and me the sun.

You come to me with hands like honey.

Time is sticky-sweet

and pours slow and thick through the hourglass.

We talk with tongues

talk it out, every bit of it, with mouths and voices

and not a word between us.

Outside it is Winter.

The moon hides behind the rain

and all that exists between you and me is an icy nothingness

a frozen ocean

the ice will never melt, and it is too thin to skate across.

When I close my eyes the moon is full.

Behind my eyes

I hold you all night

all night

all night.

My own Spring, blooming inside my chest, sliding into shimmering Summer

awake now, petals unfurling like banners

open like the fist I'm tired of clenching

ribboned like the scraps of heart you left me with.

Outside of dreams

I will never cross that frozen ocean

I will never warm the seeds

But they lay in the earth nonetheless--

dormant

never dead.