exploding
into shrapnel petals so abundantly yellow
it sparks
the spring from black soil and makes the grass catch flame again
and burn green
under my bare feet, I still hear “for Cynthia.” When I was six, its branches
budded into
a tangle of barbed-wire wildfire for Cynthia,
my favorite
baby-sitter, whose own lithe trunk had sprouted
breasts in the last
half year. For her the swallows returned, scissoring
across the sky’s
blue-and-white fingerpainting, cumulus clouds that were
the wind’s palm prints.
For her boys on stingray bicycles swarmed the streets at dusk
like fireflies
and popped wheelies. The land mines of crocus and daffodil
detonated
under our feet. Winter’s cease-fire was broken. For her it rained
five days
straight. When the sun came back, our cat Tippy left muddy paw-print flowers
on the hot hood
of our white Chevy, the engine still ticking after the ignition
had been turned off.
For her Ralph, the scrawny neighbor kid, climbed onto his wet
roof on Easter Sunday and threw
uncooked eggs at us. One splattered against the ripe swell of her hip. Its yolk dripped
yellow down
her blue denim dress and onto her bare calf’s winter-white
skin. For her
I yelled, shook my fists at him, and dared him
to come down
and be a man. She only laughed, blew him a kiss, dipped her index finger
into the yolk
and streaked my nose yellow. Forsythia. For Cynthia. Let all our words
cross-pollinate.
To open into blossom, the world must be misspoken and misheard.