ginger december

If you look at me sideways in the still green light
and if the pulse in my arms quickens, what then?
I know you to be several states away, smiling through
the snowstorms as I braid lemongrass riboon
and brush sweetbutter and sage on winter bread.

You're far away; if I see you watch me with ginger eyes,
I still won't dare to be in love with them, your
december-letter eyes. The snow is tinted with
green, pricking at my bare neck, keeping you away.

And I start letters to you in reply: "Dear Seth," and
I crumple it, throw it away; "Dear Seth," and I crumple it,
start over. And before long, I'm coiled in my answers
to questions you didn't ask, juicing limes for ink
and feeling the cold windows are
disagreeable.

The clock stings like flies in a citron garden;
I have several rib cages, and pinpoints of light on my neck
and from my shins to just above my knees. Unexpected
urgency beads in my eyes, a garden of green onions,
dill, and your skinny ankles and
by the 1974-light of several lamps, against the
nettley afghan my mother knit. I twist it in the ginger-green
ribbon the colour of your eyes, wish you well
over the telephone.