my dad's wedding ring around
my neck    i press it to my lips

imbued,not half,with promise

           love is a cool gold band

she stood,playing
the crossword
    like her great
        double bass,
& i wondered
what would get
   tired first ,,,
        her feet or
            her head

I dreamed a dream
And you were there
With perfect knockers
And tousled hair
Laughter like music
A scream serene
It seemed impossible
I dreamed a dream

She blooms where grief forgets to sleep,
beneath the sallow hush of twilight trees—
a flare of red in softened ash,
the last confession of the breeze.

Petals curled like whispered sins,
each one a blade of memory—
a wound too pretty to regret,
too sacred to let bleed freely.

She doesn’t seek the sun like roses do.
No, she is the flame of parting steps—
ephemeral,
like the breath between
goodbye
    and
      gone.

Born of myth and muddy water,
they say she grows where spirits roam—
a guardian of thresholds,
the keeper of the in-between,
wearing sorrow like a crown
no one dares remove.

And still,
   she rises.
Not for life,
but to remind the world:
some things only bloom
      in farewell.

They called her child,
yet the stars bent down to listen
when she spoke.

She was born
with galaxies behind her eyelids,
ash of ancient moons
in the crescent of her palms.

In classrooms,
she learned nothing new—
only watched
as the world caught up
to what her marrow already knew.

She stitched silence
into her sentences,
wore grief like pearls
strung along the collarbone of time.

Rain would hush for her,
mirrors would blink twice,
and clocks sometimes refused
to tick in her presence.

She moved
like someone who remembered
being fire
before flesh.

And when the grown-ups
chuckled at her wisdom,
she simply smiled—
a soft, secret smile
like she’d seen their ghosts
and offered them tea.