In the mornings, my trepidation is as present
as dew drops, soft and refracting, like tiny crystal balls.

I’m trying to reconcile the disasters in my mind,
trying to awaken myself. When we touched honesty

with our bare hands it was incandescent and you pulled
yourself away from it like it was a hot stove top,

you didn’t want to smell the burnt flesh of your palms.
You didn’t want it to brand you for the rest of your life.

In the mornings, I still want to touch that flame. I want
to be marked by it. To feel kinship with the others

burdened by honesty, I’ll open my chest to it. I guess
it’s because I grew up practicing witchcraft. I learned

it from my mother. How she’d stow away trinkets,
cinnamon sticks, and old matchbooks. I grew up

romancing the moon’s shedding skin and cutting my teeth
on little alchemies, liquids in rocks glasses.

Now, I’m a grown arsonist. I have a cauldron full
of your little league baseball cards and chablis

corks. I try to summon with you with incantations,
I sit at my altar, living in salt. In the mornings I try

to communicate with you through tarot cards
and 80s songs and Yeats poems posted

on my instagram. In the morning, I try to tell you
my love is a fire that burns clean.