Reject 38

If love has held your body close
like the horizon’s scream and meant
to dissolve the sledgehammers
of wistfulness that pound each great
holiday song into the gardener’s bed
but instead sang to you the revenges

that trot over today like the grapefruit
at breakfast, constitute your want
into a pinpoint of light, wrap it
in cellophane, wait for it to elate
in its dust and coalesce into
a diamond’s glint and amble

off as she concedes it’s not the same
as just permitting each other to ask
if there’s happiness and it shimmers.

-C.S. Henderson