Villas

Villa

June, expect the ripening of earth soon. Expect
little waves breaking into nostalgia,
clumsy impersonations to turn bittersweet. Expect
aisles full of rapids gasping for air. Wear candlelight-
You might appear breathless and fire likes oxygen.

Some evenings there won’t be sex. Expect
old men who have lost their libido to the willows. Expect
spilled gin and tangled sheets other nights.

You’re going to run into her, the woman,
who absorbs, rolls, lingers. Expect
the peach to be overripe
and the leather to get scuffed.

Waterproof all your virginities, it rains a lot. Expect
an odor in the carpet, a spill of Merlot
a haunting a glamour stain.

There will be hints of eccentric longing. Expect
the mustiness Adam felt years after leaving Eden. Come ready
for narrow halls and spacious couches. There will
be poems cruelly immortalized. Expect
to read them and cry. Expect

patterns, not just on the bedsheets and carpets,
but also in the desolating landscapes,
in the unchanging inauthentic mirrors,
in the excess of pre-existing conditions and questions.

Expect other deviant guests, other bitter flowers,
other erotic hillsides. Expect to lay
on a bed and listen to a phonograph. Expect
to fall in love with young long afternoons.

Some say expect a rebirth,
others a baptism, others claim to have been seduced
by their own mortal presence. Expect to experience
the in-between, the time that exists between
when art is witnessed and the moment
it becomes the world.