Juliet(I) by Sarah Certa

            
            It’s the thirteenth day of spring and all the snow
           
            is dirtier than it was yesterday. My teeth
           
            are one day older and the sky
           
            has another thousand molecules of cancer moving through it,
           
            but my eyes have been dry,
           
            and that feels really nice, in bed eating Oreos
           
            like a normal person, my feet getting warm as my brain
           
            softens and slips away from itself
           
            like a moon, a sailboat, all the pretty things
           
            we don’t know how to hold.
           
            You asked me for a letter
           
            and I sent you a star-shaped piece of my tongue.
           
            You asked me for a letter
           
            and this isn’t it. I’m sorry. I get so busy
           
            thinking about you that I forget
           
            to think about you. I imagine my insides
           
            like a whole sea of sailboats
           
            murmuring to each other in the dark,
           
            and I wonder how many secrets exist on the Earth at any given moment,
           
            what breed of flowers
           
            will dig their roots into our graves, what shade of gold
           
            is your breath when you dream?
           
            You make me want to make stamps out of morning,
           
            seal every envelope with a moan.
           
            How many fibers of the universe have we given birth to?
           
            Like this I am always wading through an orchestra, my hips
           
            always brushing against some sort of glass, all these breakable
           
            thoughts about God, the sun
           
            in April, the sound you make when you look at me and don’t make any sound.