we shared a window, plastic seats, drone of meds, you said, "this moon knows only three phases, before the cut, the cut itself, bleeding." we were sisters of the same laceration, same bow upon the wrist, reckless with the extravagance of pileated woodpeckers gouging out grubs from sand oaks, artifacts masticated in dim rooms, crunching bones brittle as sunlight, afternoons of angular incineration, you said "sweets are the first to go" so we ate guava turnovers under the blur of a ceiling fan long out of balance, I was a shroud of ferns, smoke woven into mourning cloak, you lit lamps with a long sliver of fatwood, hurricane running up the Gulf, a window opened and the shed grew heavy with sadness of possums, it is as much from Wednesday to Monday, the old avocado giving way, cumulus proofing into ponderous meringue, watching shelf cloud flowering lightning from causeway, burning a fat one in your van, I was a testimony of grackles, a convocation of ibis, you were the pretty sister laughing at the storm, waves losing their step, you said "we are without redemption," all my words were small birds clustered behind some dunes, you said "your eyes, empty as sea" so my horizons have always tumbled, shell after shell, wave eaten, consumed by absence, another flowering, uncataloged, another vine, opening only to moth.
Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Former cook and sometimes gardener infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast.