POEM: To A Stranger
By Lorna Dee Cervantes

I was looking for your hair,
black as old lava on an island
of white coral. I dreamed it
deserted you and came for me,
wrapped me in its funeral ribbons
and tied me a bow of salt.

Here’s where I put my demise:
desiring fire in a web of tide,
marrying the smell of wet ashes
to the sweet desert of your slate.
My intelligent mammal, male
of my species, twin sun to a world
not of my making, you reduce me
to the syrup of the moon, you boil
my bones in the absence of hands.

Where is your skin, parting me?
Where is the cowlick under your kiss
teasing into valleys? Where
are your wings? In the neck of my secret heart
where you’ll go to the warmth of me
biting into that bread where crumbs crack
and scatter and feed us our souls;

if only you were a stone I could
throw, if only I could have you.