Sunday morning. In another world
it’s so ordinary: egg yolks and the mountain 
in the window. December roses, steam
from the shower, serious coffee warming up 
on the stove. Birds calling, San Francisco. 
The smell of the ocean in our clothes.
Your smell, soaked into the collar
of yesterday’s sweater, what I pulled
on in the dawn and cold. Before
busying myself with the raspberries
and sugar. The half-conscious dog. Our own apples to slice into pieces. My hand a white 
flag at the back of your neck, the hours
like a whole movie, and weren't we only
at the beginning. Slow lifetimes before us. Immortality. A new moon. Never mind
your lips are turning blue. Never mind
the stars behind the mountain, obscured
by daylight and from this world, relentless. 
They have to betray us. It is too hard
to pretend the future could have been 
anything other than what I ended
up with: your shadow, your star
cloistered in the sculpted wall, at the limit. 
Where nothing ever happens. You would 
never get to grow old.

Sasha Leshner is a poet and editor from Brooklyn New York. Her works is drawn from the intersections of art, memory, and the possibilities of their articulations. She has an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University and a BA from NYU. Her work has been published and is forthcoming from ExPat Press, (M)othertongues Magazine, Pour Vida Zine, west 10th magazine, 89+ and the luma foundation, and others. Her poems are dedicated to the beloveds who beat her to the next world.