by Ace Boggess

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against a small yard rock

one by one they reach its ragged brown

wait there like insects

white flecks of pocket lint

blink & I’ve missed them

vanishing inward in instant fade

the stone still warm from a sunnier day                

 

a cycle: they land then shrink &

self-erase like suicides

jumping from bridges into the wet embrace

 

I want to catch them in my palm &

oversee their sudden thaw

 

they disappear too quickly

so I hunch down staring

at this protrusion from the garden

where they pause just long enough to rest

 

stripping themselves of themselves

leaning toward the invisible

present & no longer there

lovers who have stayed too long

under the covers of a stranger’s bed