I wake again to the psuedo-moon cast by the neighbor’s security light into this cold October room; and turn,

searching for the name of an orange flower by imagining the hummingbird’s summer love of it, but the word hides;

worrying over a grown child, 3,000 miles away, seeing her walk Boston’s lonely streets after waiting tables, alone on tired feet;

wanting with Aphrodite’s passion, awakened by a briny desire for a man’s thick fingers on my hip;

wishing for a deeper forgiveness of my parents, knowing they will die soon, like falling stars, and my sure sense of them will fade, gone like the name Crocosmia aurea;

I go to the garden and notice a sliver moon slipping west, reach for a dark fig from a low branch, feel the tiny scratches of chickadees on the fruit, turn west with the moon, and eat.

-Kathleen Byrd