I dreamed we gathered
to watch you braid
the dough. Your fingers played it
like a harp, heavy and warping.
I woke up to silent cacti
unmoved by wind. Fields
of olive trees whose tops licked
the rim of the sky that howled.
The architect’s voice
hollowed out a room, while
a butterfly swooped down on
a lantana bloom to move
new air over its cluster.
Last night when we came
back to the farm, the dark etched
out all the light and filled with
the scent of honey, of hot limestone,
and took on the thickness
of flesh that I walked through
like a wasp entering a fig knowing
she will lose her wings, will die,
and all we ask, she and I,
is how can we let any world other
than this secret flower touch you?
Julia Falcinelli is a poet living in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Born in Savannah, GA, she holds an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College. Her poems have appeared in slips slips, the Skybridge Review, and are forthcoming in Streetlight Magazine.