July
In the basement of a house in Nova Scotia
we sat together on a single dryer.
Your dress was long, the color of your eyes.
It was the emerald color of your eyes.
It was the color of Rimbaud’s green nights.
And Lorca’s green, the color
of his mind. That August, in the silence
of a different house, by another sea, I
played a game: if the crumpled
paper thrown across the room
falls in the wicker basket, this girl will
be my wife. For certain then.
