Sunflowers

I'm in the world but I still want the world.

I'm full of longing and can't move,

enthralled in the garden. Having died

all the way back to the root, I grow again

into a version of the thing I love. I'm her

and not her, hermaphrodite with a heart

like a plateful of black flames.

The bees inspect me like doctors.

All my hard little tears, future selves

who haven't grown. Bedclothes swell on the line

while around me giant sunflowers burn

through their masks of radiant desire

.