Flora

She’s born under a broccoli leaf
delivered by the hermit next door
the pills I take transform his voice
to an abacus of inaudible words
the white-gold sky
bursts open like a boy in love

I’m too high to know if I’m holding
my daughter or a sea bass
her mouth is dramatic and I swear
she has scales!
Everything glitters—
the garden, the clouds, her skin
Manuel’s strange and sudden wings

He must have flown me home
for when I wake, sunset blooms
in the garden of our wallpaper

Flora sleeps
still as a pinned butterfly
Manuelzinho snores gently
exhausted by fatherhood

I was not built
to hold this much love