Mandarin Dreams [poetry]

In a dream last night I wrote a repeating song about the way the smell of fresh oranges and fine pulp glows off your brown skin in the summer

It is winter again and you should know by now how I hate the dead sky and rotten leaves in decay on the steps

I need your sunlight more than ever now—, these little mandarin dreams of you won’t go, won’t do

In the mornings now when the sun is abrasive and gray and when my skin is cold and lips chapped I cling back to our

thighs wrapped together tightly on my full sized bed in the late summer and when you said

I like how you let the sweat drip all over me me

Two years later now I sit alone at a busy bar and

EVERYONE MAKES A NOISY HUM AND I CAN SEE YOUR VOICE IN THIS HARMONY

I love this pen here tonight but the flow of its ink is now the suspect of this minute. Once it is nice and smooth then next—, sharp and jagged, lonely and incomplete.

I look over all my old notes for you and I see the ink bleeding across the pages and wonder if it was for alcohol, for tears or for slobber and I know it was honestly for all three

And I look over my shoulder every time I think I hear you behind me