since the tamarind surrendered
her wisdom and became
a toothless concentrate puckered
on the long blonde tongues

of melamine shelving

since you held the wrinkled seed
pods archaic as talking drums whose
sentences crumble slowly in the solitary bars

of cellphone prisons

since you wrote a broken syllable
of mist plucked from the ghostly braille

of moonlight’s book

since you chased a turquoise
colt, a slim river bolting
in streams of kohl across

childhood’s eyes

since you strung a solstice
of marigolds on shriveling

glaciers of teeth

since you built this
figment on

a sprig of time