Portrait

              of you: small girl in a torn dress,

the dress is pink as a dream, a tongue, jacaranda-jeweled tree 
 
a fire beside. What 
 
is left behind is never 
left behind if we never 
             disown its weight 
                                                                                      Let her and her press 
                                                              her body here 
                                                   and there or lie:
 
you might become any burned house

an open palm upon which these future ghosts will cut
astonished rivers 
 
                                       Everything, and yearning, might snag in your current 

You might

 
become night, a succession of her and her mouths


Lucid. A hot swift. A starling startling northwards. Lonely but good, 
                        you’re so good that when clouds open over Fordham Road you 
 
                                                       
                                                               turn mythical 
 
                                                    turn into a palomita and rise, rise into 
 
                                       smoke, a burn scar 
 
                         a child’s daydream: am I becoming, have I begun 
Credit

Copyright © 2018 Christina Olivares. This poem originally appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review. Used with permission of the author.