ALL THESE SOFT, WARM NIGHTS GOING TO WASTE

​On this full-mooned night, the sky is alight, 
the road glows, the stars dangle like tinsel 

on last year’s tree, hinged
to the endless season of sky. You hear an echo 

in the air, over the late-night road,
in the mating calls of the frogs leaping

by the lake. It's nearly spring, and wind is irregular 
breath—the time her hand found the fossa 

behind your knee. That hitch. That heat. 
And you remember the wildflowers that sprung up 

from soaked earth, turned loverlike, intertwined, 
only for their petals to fray 

and brown. Only to hang their heads, mourning 
the winter. How you winter the lack— 
 
the absence of the one you want. 
You consider this bright, cratered thing, 

bone-white as the thigh your fingers ghosted over.
Moonstruck, you eye this glow as you sway 

on your axis, knowing, far away, she sees it too— 
a thought that craters you.