The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Love Letters from a Burning Planet by MJ Gomez

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They Asked, Do You Love Her to Death?

I said, speak of her over my grave and watch
how she brings me back to life. I said

                              what a dream it is, to build a forever
                              out of ruin

scattered at our feet,
like falling hair, shorn by gunfire.

                              But why can’t falling also mean flight?
                              Who could ever say the beloved earth

is our prison?
Instead, dance with me, star-leaping boy,

                              woman who is more than a mother,
                              a wife, woman who is more

than just a woman, I love you in all your wrongness,
woman-boy, lover-boy,

                              brown-eyed baby love singing your way
                              through a hurricane. Let me elevate you

past the atmosphere, past the dandelions,
into love, into morning. I swear,

                              our devotion was always meant to outlive us.

I taste earth-sweat through wood-smoke
and I’m ready to crawl home to heaven, to honey

                              to baby, darling,
                              look. Look how happy we are to be no-one and still

here. I promise we’re still here. Hope can wait–
winged sandals tanning at our doorstep.

                              All things soft and beautiful and bright are held here,
                              right here, in my finger

tracing your collarbone. What a blessing it is
to say again the name you never wanted,

                              to hold your name to the light, red light,
                              until it sings. Singed blossom red.

Lily-like blood, lady-like blues convincing pain it is music.
Magic doesn’t need to be real.

                              This body is enough, I swear.

Let me craft a world big enough for your potted plants.
Let me build a word we’ll recognize

                              in any universe, a red petal buried
                              between plates of shifting earth, here—

Coffee-ground,
you were the end of a long dream, a buoy found

                              half-underwater, still floating.
                              Green surrounding the coastline.

Green beautiful the way dawn beckons
more of itself. More green. More love.

                              There’s always room for more love. Green-stained
                              dawn-singing-boy sewing a blanket,

dear running-bird turning the tunnel
to volcano-earth,

                              blanket-coated dawn, worn dawn-blanket,
                              stay a little while longer.

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