persimmon afternoons

amelia nason

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i think         i’m in love with the past
that single drop of sunlight         as it rolls
down a peeling coral wall like a tear 
the final chords of from eden drift 
from a record player on her nightstand       
lyrics lost like the particles of dust floating
in front of a window         left open 
to the fading persimmon afternoon
& my heart fractures to lose something 
so completely         as a single moment in time

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but she leans         across the bed  
all bony wrists & elbows bruised by bike crashes
pulls back a silver needle with lazy fingers
& our moment endures for five more minutes
i wish i could replay more than a song 
but the sun keeps sinking 
the day keeps ending         i’d rather be 
the light that weeps on her wall 
or a vinyl         both in eternal revolution     
always today & never tomorrow        
or worse yet         yesterday

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at the door i admit         i don’t want to go home
then stay         she pulls me down porch steps
we hide in her backyard’s tall switchgrass
getting drunk on full-bodied promises
as one by one         stars emerge from the dusk         
guests at our picnicked inevitability 
i offer them strawberries         stolen from
a cardboard box on her kitchen counter
after         i taste of cerise fruit & her chapstick

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these constellations will be here next week
but we won’t          we ate all the berries 
if ants come to the supposed feast          
they’ll find us with nothing left to offer 
it’s been hundreds of afternoons
since ours tarnished into evening
& when i look at her          the loss is written 
in an eighty percent cacao smile 
that isn’t saved for me anymore
i can’t help wondering if she was a dream          
people never feel real 
after you wake up from them