Lisa

I tell her you are like a field of
marigolds at sunset Jesus Christ
as I recover from watching her cum. 

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I'm reeling because, I wasn't expecting
the hardness in her, the solidness of her crow's feet
like bark after hands scrape the sap away—

​

and she was so gentle by the daylight,
twice my age, a grandmother, a widow, 
sweetness like a fresh peach,
and you could have mistaken all that for timidness
if you did now know what it meant
for a woman to go on living and refuse to die—

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but after, while her curly blonde hair 
finds its home between my fingers,
it's like she becomes a memory

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of growing up in Europe,
like I grew up inside pictures of her,
at our chateau in the Alps with the purple rugs—

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and I swear to God this is true:
in this moment she replaces my past,
she is real in a way origins are not

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and I try to tell her this,
but you can't tell the Summer anything,
you can only love her and watch her die.