Lindsey Royce: Things I Didn’t Know I Loved

Title after Nazim Hikmet
 
The moment he withdraws from my body, 
spent, the blush that follows 
slants across tossed, white sheets.  
 
Stepping into a skirt and fastening the side button, 
happy to be a woman wearing a skirt done up the side, 
my body is healthy, full, flushed with love. 
 
The front door’s creak, my face scrubbed by sunrise, 
crunch of my boots on the rocky drive, 
under mountains rising onyx to blue—
 
I boost up into my truck, fire the ignition, 
and drive, windows open, past the reek of horses, cattle,
     yak 
feeding on lush bales of hay. 
 
Scrub oak, evergreens, and aspens spike 
through the last pools of snowmelt. These actual things 
allow me to relive the velocity  
 
with which I’ve learned I love him, fearless 
and brazen as a migrant begging food. 
Too much, too soon. Exhilarating, all-in.

Copyright 2019 Lindsey Royce. From Play Me a Revolution by Lindsey Royce published by Press 53.