I remember strolling through the humid darkness
down that solitary road to your apartment,
the cicadas contracting their tymbals
and the chains moaning an impending rain.
Remember wanting to never forget
that feeling, the one where the sky
is all fat and warm with arrival—
if you’re always heading toward something
then you can never be leaving it.
I have a friend who once brought flowers
to an aunt suffering from dementia
who’d forget they were in her hands.
Oh my, she’d say, Oh my, she’d say,
over and over. And I wonder what it’s like
to experience something gorgeous
for the first time, every time.
Like maybe we could linger forever
in the open vignette of your doorway,
which is closed tonight, the cicada
beneath your unlit window splitting open
at the head, dragging its raw body out
into the world, to leave behind its old form.