archaic tennis courts are drying baby’s breath while forgotten suburbs wade through high tide / your ivory-stripped keys promise the angry word as hibiscus / floating high in bathwater / witnesses the fatal lie / knowing pretend / promise the forgotten / promise the archaic / orange tile / oil paint / wait for the garden wall to crumble / you’ll never answer / jacaranda / gothic cathedral / fig leaf / the jasmine on your neck is a falsehood / I knew it had to die / verbena on the side of the high-way / nothing remembered / when I watched you run through corridors / when I watched you / flowering-dogwood petals / when you sat on the table in the dark / when I saw your face obscured / thirty-eight degrees / dead grass on the hill beneath the spires / when I returned the day after you left / when I returned did you decide / sweet alice shrivels on the footpath / when I returned / when did you cease / when I always / ask for the hydrangeas watered in the night beside the black lake.

Image: Anna Romanova