At the start of summer I thought /
only love could make my body
welcome the earth.

We spooned
out avocados beside lakes, // I licked pink salt from your nape, /
drew the shapes of continents
on your back

To let go /
of pain as an anchor. There is a look /
to every exchange, a kind of weather.

The doll was small, about a foot long, with a cloth body and a 1920s-style, plastic Kewpie face. She was pitch-black like the new moon.

the whale doesn’t move // the sea fills its stomach // with things that cannot sing

Coarse sheets, rose quartz on an altar. None of this belongs to me. / Rain softens everything outside, white flowers become foam. / You cleaned yourself with my shirt.