Though winter came inevitably, and most of the time
I loved your scent, which whiffed like clean snow

except when you played basketball or worried, then
a mélange of dry roses, sweaty musk misted

like light-gray billows brooding before rare flakes
fall, when small birds burrow in spare evergreens,

furlike for the chill and frost ahead of long days.
I didn’t see you awake in the crest of the night,

concerned with ambition, tending the other call
given in this modern, fettered Eden while

I sat in our apartment, vanilla frosting box,
searched for work among meaning, watched the clock

on suede couches stuffed like violet winter cabbages,
not enough plush to make you happy, or me.

There were no gray hairs yet, no path to trace
labyrinths of our eyes, no uncertain depths.

When the puppy came, things got better.
I started working, left bridal earnestness,

named loneliness, ghost of our garden,
which looms when the sun is still cold,

and spring is a sweet, pink starburst of memory—
promises of tulips peek out from the ground.

But I longed for those early summer nights in bed
when thunder collapsed our vibrant bodies,

lightening flashed a polaroid of happiness,
skin electric blue, illusion framed white sheets,

as moonlight braided the rib of your youth
where I keep reaching, inside of you,

despite hands that ache to form myself.