Figment as Snowdrops

    
Figment as Snowdrops

This year, I stayed
up when she came as blood
moon, rutilant promise lunar
eclipsing my dried lip crescents.
Tossing back ibuprofen
like vernal mints, 
almost catching my winter
coat on fire, I danced.
Body sanguine, primal.
I remembered then 
that when she comes,
it’s not all lilac and freshly cut grass.
Naked, she swoops as tempest,
mud thick, damp, and refusing
to release shoelaces. Spring 
does not care for limn beauty,
does not move like poetry.
A moonwoman, that night
I plunged into vermillion, 
skin sodden, and dreamt of eating 
snowdrops. Honeyed petals
tongue-thawing. At the dinner table
—nothing but bowing white bells.
My family’s stomach full of dew
made distance palatable. Tamed.
Surrounded by kin, I braved. 
Burst the gale of chewing 
to ask them: let me live
like that.