by Suzanne Richardson

Fire Season

In moth season I levitate because of a married man,
the sound of my own desire keeps
me awake at night, keeps me tossing four-feet
above the sheets, I imagine us powder-thrashing
like moths at a screen—

On the roof of his car, off route 14,
it feels like 1955. We watch the moon squeeze itself
between the earth and the sun. It’s
hallucinatory, the sun is a shrinking slice of light. We
can’t touch. I am already casting hell-grey shadows,
eclipsing his wife. It’s so devastating
we must not look directly.
His voice, If I live my life right, I’ll die on the moon
looking at the earth,
looking at all the people I love, and all the people
I once loved. A married man
pushes the atmosphere and I levitate above
the forest, this moth season behind me,
he murmurs—soon this will all be on fire.