To a New Lover, Unfortunately

I have accepted that it floats

up to the skim: this clotting centrally in the chest

of a box or self or midwife who sees

rolled up into the child something rotten

from the very crowning of the head.

Take your hands off it and wash them

under a pump to tell the body the illness

is forgotten; unwrap yourself from

a crowded bed and flee to hot water

slapping angry and fast against tile.

My home is here, where my makeup

washes down onto my feet.

I have never loved windows

except to fly out of them; when in a box,

I want to be in a box—although you

are fine to stretch bare and pitted in front

of the whole block, you happy thing.

Nothing comes up the same way

it seems it will. The flags unfurl

their sides to a wave of dust

at the embassy down the street,

my fingers clip at my eyelashes,

the church chimes strange. My mother

bought me orchids and they won't die.

They just bloom wrongly anew

every day, so how will I know

when it is time to leave you?

Originally published in Atlanta Review, Summer 2017, recipient of an International Publication Award and finalist for the International Poetry Prize