In November I dream of tulips
while your hands open me like a psalm,
you sing me into poems and alabaster sand,
you feed my marrow with harmony,
with you I know how the sky fills the earth
with spaces between
the two of us.

I bought twenty tulips at the Westside Market, ten paper-white ones,
ten blush pink. We bring each other to perfection. We take all we are
with us to that quaking threshold.