Valentine,
BY COREY MILLER
The moon reminds me of the elongated moon
of your body, the moon with its little cliché ass,
the moon with its old notions of the soul. I forget the details
of my childhood but not the glacier-ironed fields
I’ve retroactively placed you in
like a bookmark in a memoir, hoping
a bookmark could be read
as part of the story. What is it you’re made of there? The breath of a doe
climbing a ladder of cold air. Something close to romantic
but untainted by the unreality of romance, by the rose
holding love tight by the thorns, unable to be refreshed
even by the Modernists. Nor is your image ruined
by our modern love of reality. So what is it
you’re made of here? Something in-between,
a tale breathed back and forth so often
that we’re finally telling the same
mangled version, like our trip
to the redwoods where the sun grows
steeply up from the ground
as if some kintsugi god had stitched
the broken pot of the forest
with gold.
