Lucent

The moon has
      decayed
      swallowed itself
      slept
      sparked
      a wisp of light
      bloomed
      and
Resurrected itself
Seven times
Since I saw you last. 
 
Three continents away
      as the crow flies
      which it doesn't
I slap a stranger's hand off my thigh
My girls laugh, he blusters
I look away from their glee, his angry appled throat
And into a mirrored strobe-light wall,
Another sky.
 
You rise in my mind
      more vivid than you have any right to be
And my face tips up;
Memory and response 
Past reason. 
 
Twenty minutes later,
Compelled by an errand that feels urgent
I take a cab home. 
I trade
Old-school disco and a tangle of bodies 
That sing each other electric   
For
Cricket-song in my father's garden,
Jasmine exhaling, soft and feral
And the clamour of texts from the girls
      where are you   are you okay
Because
You make me want to water the plants.
 
The sunflower is my sister now
No longer an inanimate unknowable thing;
If I mentioned the sunlight to her
In a language she knew,
Even now
She would dream of its heat, 
The way it bent to kiss her this morning
And lift her brow to touch the memory back,
Stalk and petals lucent in this moonless night.