Folded

A canopy of umbrellas ungreets me
in your back garden, somewhere a gate

screams for oil hinging on lost years. Rusted
keys quieten in my pocket,

not fitting a new hole
screwed

illicitly with excuses. In another world, bells
peal into rings with invisible cracks, shimmering

on jaded eyeballs of the woman who did not
attend. Did not RSVP. Did not exist? Perhaps,

time had locked her
intuition with unheeded prophecies. Last

night, you cried of
dandruff on antlers, wandering trousers, second class

train tickets to the moon, being
trapped in my dream, nobody woke but I

had hoisted those umbrellas during
a petrified 4am drenched in sweaty palms

No one else to smile a litany
of reassurances; the sun would rise again,

I would need shade again, or sunscreen
SPF 99 to shield us from your burn.

Appeared in Flatbush Review