The young arrive adorned.
They shiver in the light,

She was older, sleek, and had a bite to her, but I was bolder with my knees on either side of her.

Ava taught me how to smoke
in the woods behind our high-school dorm.

Always the unbearable—the sting of her demands,
the threats, the way she kept me from my friends—

The dust of the stable
still on me,
I sidled on up

The one who held her hair up off her neck
and asked me to unclasp her dress

   Waking in silence and, through tilted blinds,
the mark of red bougainvillea—pink light tossed
         at a white door. Out of sleep, I turn

It was white I wanted —of snow, clouds, of sky overcast, of
       a star if you take the shine from it. Usual
           sound, light, and I wake—but sense a shift

But he couldn’t drench the black.
So, he painted what he owed it

I feel free to kiss your eyelids.
                  I remember