The Silvering Hour

Mute as shame, I’m lying among cherry blossoms

bled of their color by the age of the hour.

This is my haven, my precipice, the moment I shatter.

I want to cup the moon’s dying cheek and dream of a night

upon which darkness fell inside me and I lay like this,

still dreaming, but also asleep, and not urgent to wake.

I want worlds in which it’s okay to be me and I’m not afraid

of even the people I love, where gender might be real

but it is the body that does not exist, like color

in a world lit only by the dead glow of night’s rolled back eye

as she bites her own zenith, wishing she could sleep.

This poem first appeared in the second volume of the poetry anthology, Aurora, by Allegory Ridge, spring 2021