Another day, another dull dimming of
beams of light behind the iris, your syrupy
cinnamon sad girl Y2K twee twinkle
day list named for your knees, dimpled by
every corner you’ve ever met, skewed 1990 degrees,
finding ways to bring it all up (since you’re thirty-five,
gatekeeping your girlhood): she’ll take an inch, take a mile.
Hell’s hot on hounds and it’s your house on a Sunday;
ignite the candle, millennial mischief seance for one,
just to find the GoFundMe. Your true love’s already dead.
Keep the musty polaroids and punky playlists, keep liturgy
letters unsent – who could’ve known trickled time
melts in minutes, not years. You watch it all back:
new movies of old movies, of your once favorite book,
only the teens are mid-twenties, the soundtrack now cool.
Paper-up the junk journal in rubber cement while
quails coyly coo down quiet California streets,
reeling in the soft tape, to play it all back
start to finish. Street lights stutter on – stutter off –

trying to shrug off the sweetness of all beginnings
until you feel a single sweet moment again.
Vapored fog from the coastline, seeping through
Xyris blooms along your bedroom marshland:
yellow flowers remind you to look past the moon.
Zippy, zappy love songs? You sing back every word.