after Diane Lato

I wake to trees gone skeletal, frosted chrysanthemums, fits of ginger where the sky hangs, death of things glaring as sunbeam upon pupil.

Already, December dresses up in her whites and golds—trades her emeralds for silver when moon swells full, sealing me inside my shadow self for winter.

Clam shut in subnivean burrows, I am opaline. Water makes a home in my marbled body, solidifies, and threatens to rip my heart’s skin open like a broiled peach.

Say it: say that I am dead, and I’ll root my feet into the earth, unfold my lips: into petals: into your palms, shed summer from my shoulders.

There is a time for winter, for mending the bones, freezing off the dead things so new life can grow more lush, more violet.

The slabs of ice caked over my irises will melt into lakes, these lips one day will bloom. But summer has lasted a decade: I am in the winter of my youth.