Aubade, Belated
The small girl of you you admitted to once you admitted to your being
loud when you talked of cats in love & cats out of love
I couldn’t love a man
No one ever does because man is a word we use when we mean to leave
alone these smallest me’s of girl or rain in your eyes
there is only the desert shift to sky nothing between but petroglyphs
nothing between two people ever but sound the tongue can dull I know a way
to kiss without getting papercut all you do is fold a corner of the page
to mark it ancient In the books you left the dog ears belong to uncaged
hounds They return in summer dark to ask me to the woods
Out there a kiss means anything.
From the essay in which two snakes enmesh
until they destroy each other I pull a card that reads a night of seduction
Who were you talking to,
little darling,
smallest glass of water for an ant?
That’s you in this story a dew
Forgive me I want
to be the scientist again I cannot be
the leaf underside Forgive me but from you
I cannot turn away
Hannah Rego is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. In 2016 they were awarded the Flo Gault poetry prize from Sarabande Books. They have attended residencies at Spalding University's Low-Res MFA and SAFTA through Sundress Publications. Their poetry appears in BOAAT, BOMB Magazine, and The Louisville Review. They live in Brooklyn and on twitter @hannahkalena.