You dress your evening in linen, whispered
across your chest, your creek water,
your air suddenly cool
enough to drink.

Your mosquitoes take to me,
swell my skin, make me feel something
thirsts for me. After half a life
here, I should know better
than to touch. It’ll go on its own
if only I let it.

What else works this way?
The loss I bury each day
just to claw up in the calm
of your moonlight? Pain like a whale
beached on your oily shore?

Can I walk you home
to the bottom of this cicada song, where every name
is a new language, where no story ends?
You think it’s a bad idea for me
to come in? You’re right—I know. I know
I can’t hide my hunger
in a smile. You’ve seen this look

a thousand times. A firefly circles, lands
on my smallest knuckle, then goes
back to circling. What love,

New Jersey, do I deserve?
This light, this bioluminescence, this enzyme and its substrate, passing
for magic?