That one time

your fat cheeks lingered like perfume, the quiet sound of a yawn on the pillow,

the distant, happy clatter of cups and spoons, April sun peeking down through

sleepy slits, caterpillars know they are not done growing, so here I was on the brink

of altering, vanishing, or turning on my head before your mouth choked the breath

of yet another shedding with a sigh and cocooned me into patience, you have always

snapped your way into my heart, dripping Peter Gabriel ballads, may you drop

from this body like ripe fruit, find a patch of soil against your own vanishing, poems

wing your fall, everything you say in your sleep shall come back to burn the daylight,

a trail of my handprints to bleach the ashes of the new dawn, fingers wet with ink.

Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her second poetry collection Praise the Unburied was published with Chaffinch Press in 2021. She is Review Editor of Ezra, An Online Journal of Translation.