The jasmine under my backyard oaks is blooming. Thick, dirty
ground cover and reaching white blossoms, like pinwheels, stir the air.
The breeze carries their scent to our cocoons, our bodies curled
toward one another in separate cerulean hammocks. We pinch time
and pass joints rolled tight by your hands, much bigger than mine.
Hands that didn’t help me hang the blue hammocks between the oaks.
I stretched them with just enough slack to double wrap their ropes
while hummingbirds hovered near faux feeders, bare pinecones
once painted with peanut butter and rolled in wild bird seed.

In late spring, a rainstorm broke the weak oak’s branch and it cut through
the porous parachute nylon with ease. The rain kept on. I didn’t notice
for days the fabric hung wounded, but from the kitchen window
you couldn’t tell. The hammocks soaked and dried and soaked and dried.
A hummingbird beak got stuck in the screen door mesh. Roaches rushed
from under the jasmine, over my toes. My wet soles rooted in soil
and I remembered when I started hating this plant. Ripping it
from rich landscapes, my hands pulling back from the upset bugs,
each a dark lodestar leading me on my knees straight to you.