Peter Mason "Crush 1999"

Published by Sarah Uzunlar, ProMosaik Poetry

Crush 1999 - Peter Mason

The good lilac just beyond the house

hangs in bloom like a lace dress.

With no one home, I gather

my young body from the closet,

smell every floral and vased death,

fit loose my sister’s robin’s egg

skirt around my waist. Quiet,

in her unlit room, I go tenderly

to the mirror, my bare collarbone

a trickled pond of redbirds

that will ribbon unsoftly with time—

but here, now, I am seven, and love

so deeply a boy in second grade,

I need to be pretty in the dark.