What scratches inside a thing?
Love is twofold. The burning taste of new,
and the slow, steady work of revision.
At the kitchen table, stitching back
former selves. The familiar gesture
of putting saliva on a ladder down
the pantyhose. Then, a drop of nail polish
to preserve the elusive. Your eyes
measuring the gesture, eager to dismiss.
Later, sewing the running hole, needle’s
eye too wide to contain the remains of the day.
Outside, the moon softly cuddling
behind clouds. Its breath, a lungful of summer.
Inside, the heart, a rhizomatic sponge,
flurrier particles going in and out.
Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, HeadStuff, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her collection The Flavor of The Other is scheduled for publication in 2020 with Dos Madres Press. She is the current Poetry Editor of The Blue Nib.