Saying a Name One Thousand Times,

it has become an empty noise.

Right here
she is rolling in bed
sheets tangled in her legs
sweat traces
a line from wristbone to hip
her hands hold the bedpost to whiteness
in her dream it is raining
in her dream they are rained upon

She sees him led to adventure;
he is buying Plum Blossom a drink and he is
wasting that madness to carve her name in the soft tar of a street.

She is suddenly then open
and turned from dreaming rain
her hand slipped down into absence
a knot relaxed and then harder still.

He will bring her
a foreign bloom
for her catalog of flowers
and she will fold it into her album,
the one she keeps under her bed,
the one place he'd never find a greenhouse.