for Emily
We were only girls then
and we did not yet not love ourselves.
Our deaths were only beginning to ripen.
In one dream of us, I wait for her the way, once,
I did not. I help collect her spilled lunch
from the gravel. We miss the rumbling bus and spend
all day hiding in the neighbor’s wild yard
and walk to an almost-dry creek and do not talk
about the many little deaths inside of it.
In that dream, there is not her red frightened face
outside the glass. I did not abandon her. The apple
is not rolling in the street because this time
I saved it. In that one, the future
sits between us like a figment in the grass
and says we have time still to decide our lives.
We make for her a jewelry of clover
and we let her be the queen.
from To See the QueenFind it in the library
Copyright © Persea Books 2013
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Persea Books.
