After Ada Limón
I am asking you to touch me, to give me a hand, to lift me
up, and hold me as porcelain, as something dangerous.
Hold nothing back as if you’re spitting out the pit of a plum.
The room is the same as before you slept with that man.
As maple leaves flitter off their branches, I can’t share you
like I told you I could. The red-tailed hawk is ravenous,
low-flying for its next catch, and finds a yearling crow
to snatch. I’m hungry. Enough with descension, with cutting
off viburnums, enough with smashing bone on asphalt to watch
headwater lead back to an endless ocean. Where is the wind
you promised me? You convinced me you were more
than what I thought was possible, more than the sediment
of crushed seashells, more than the coral found in sunset.
I leave faster than you ever thought I could.
Thea Matthews is a poet of African and Indigenous Mexican descent originally from San Francisco, California. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her work has appeared in Alta Journal, New Republic, Massachusetts Review, Epiphany Journal, among others. Currently, she is an editor and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. www.theamatthews.com