I learned your language by its edges
first: the crescents of your fingernails, the smooth nook

of your earlobes. You practice entangling promises
in the kitchen vents, dropping words like dimes

into the mouth of a milk jar, no longer hers
or mine without inverted light to claim it. Your face

along the sidewalk cracks resist the truth
of mirrors, your face as you nurse a new branch

to sprout a new sky of language. You flip
each word onto my stomach, like a game we used to play.

You pour I will into my eyes.