For the first time in years

I peel an orange for myself,

almost panicked by the time

it takes and the messiness

of the task. The slowness of eating,

belongs to the tempo of the rain

that pours and pours

volumes of collecting silence.

On my fingers then a morning

in Seville –

The smoky scent of tangerine

preceded the sunrise.

The day before it had been too hot

to find the Plaza de Armas bus station.

Thirty five degrees and rising

seemed only to brand despair.

I sweated out a broken heart

wiped it from forehead to sleeve,

tried to leave it behind,

the baby in a bath of cool water.

As if I could. It stayed with me,

an invisible scar, a moon’s crater.

It asks for love, for forgiveness,

for another chance to grow,

pleading as a child now,

impossible to deny,

or a flower, a moon-flower,

never before imagined

and only entirely possible

on a day such as this

when permission is granted

to venture from bus to rocket.