Tell me you’ll cherish my poetry, each word
I choose, my plain bedspread, unwieldy tablecloths:
wet towels dry faster when

draped over sunsets. Tell me I make the scales
on the salmon’s shoulder shine; pink meat
shrinking into yellowing teeth.

Tell me I sweat rain deep into the horizon; breathe the cool breeze
into Tuesdays; pluck the freckles from your cheeks
and make young unspotted ladybugs.

I collapse the stars: a silver battery cracking in half
like a gecko slipping out of its writhing green tail. Cacti drink
fresh water from their stomachs;

penguins are only cold if they aren’t in love. Finches’ wings form
under my fingernails, and my veins are filled with
golden Daffodils. The clear hairs

on my feet: fields of wild rice rising into glowing snow. Tell me
my hands will never age; no one will ever
see through my skin.