MURMUROUS LILT IN WHITE ❋ Julie Mannell

When you are gone I imagine
you go to wherever Christmas
lights live in the summertime,
imbroglio of exhausted colours.

I have been so grey all winter.
My face is the sole survivor
of a pack of eggs that went bad
yesterday, a smirking protein rot.

I say, demure as a neon light,
We should treat everyday like
St. Patrick’s day, forgetting
all of our sweaters are brown.

This happens every year here,
we get one warm day and tuck
away all our heavy coats before
the final snow storms’ presage

—this happens, every curly arm
embarrassed into the pockets of
their masters’ chests, anemone
fanned from girls’ French braids.

Our eyes grow yellow as corn
for we’ve been waiting too long,
long enough for the wastes of
animals to sediment with garbage

making fake rocklike foundations.
Crusts for feral feet dictate our
loaned practices of speech: this is
why we say things like I love you.

I love you. I love the way petrichor
is like catnip for poets. I love how
music swirls around its instrument.
I love a cat’s look before its pounce.

I love you. This happens; especially
late at night when you are the black
hole under the blanket. Bodies lie
in the absence of light and omission

of shape. This happens all year here.
The forms disappear and I feel hungry
for the obvious materiality of you. You
are the whisper that bore skin and teeth.

You are the slurp that dawned a hair.
You are the choke that breathed lips.
You are the swallow that earned spit.
You are the blink that conveyed hands.

At night you are a mere hollow croak,
the bodiless snore that speaks to no one,
the tired greys weighted to our eyelids,
going where bulbs go, into the deep thick.