Sass
What to do with all that sass
in your eyelashes as you stare

me down, you might say to me
as I walk past you in the grocery store

quoting Lorca under my breath, saying:
green, how I want you green –

and the pixels framing that moment
were unpardonable, and we forgive

each other symbolically, thinking how lazy
I've become sitting, as I am, alone in a cold garage

smelling of wet wood in the boondocks with the
hollyhocks and the lilacs growing through my ears

as if I had died and been buried already neath the cold ground,
and spring had collapsed inside my flesh and I was everywhere

and everything, rather than just a girl,
with enough sass to tease you,

and keep you board until the winter comes,
until I can teach myself to forge currents again.

Sass is a nomadic virtue, thitherto unrecognized,
and you will never know me, you will never lay in my bed,

and speak my language, despite your tribulation
of momentary egalitarian novelty, you would like to

think of me as chocolate, melting between the wet spot
between teeth and tongue, but you will never touch me

more than the brief scratch of strangers sidestepping
each other in an aisle way, much like newlyweds,

we will never remember each other long enough to mourn.