José Felipe Ozuna

Aubade with Metamorphosis

This morning the pillow holds your skull

the way a cocoon holds a butterfly,

as if any second you might turn into a mess

of wings and wind and whip your body

through the room. Outside, the sun is barely rising

and it colors everything from the grass to your left cheek

a pale orange. Once, I dreamt that oranges were really suns

and every time we stuck our thumbs into the peel it sizzled,

and when we went to wash our hands soft light would spill 

from our fingertips and into the sink and we’d watch it swirl

into the drain until we’d see our reflection in the ceramic.

I can’t stop looking at the sun now. I want to hold it there

even if it burns, so the seasons change around it and I can trace

the snowflakes falling and watch them melt before they hit the ground.

In a few weeks you’ll stop saying the word love. For anything.

I’ll try to think of your face but only remember the way

the sun hit it, how you turned yourself away from it. 

I open the window and close the blinds. 

I watch as you unfold and the morning air takes you with it.

You Can Never Have Too Much Sky

After Sandra Cisneros

But today I ask the clouds to show me something new.

It’s January, which means the Minnesota sky is a concrete

block of gray and black. Ice and dead trees sprawl 

like broken bones begging to be put back in place.

Wind whistles in my ears and I’ve been trying to pry meaning 

from it with my fingers, torture some lesson out of this cold

air. Out loud I ask how many times I would need to hurl myself 

at the lake before it cracked, how many beatings my flesh 

would have to take before it’s no longer mine. I miss the sound of leaves 

and the way the sun hurt my eyes. My footprints are still in the snow

from the last time I walked this trail. I step into my echo’s feet

and I’m nowhere. I watch the boys between the trees throw snowballs.

I know it’ll be over soon. The hard part is staying warm.

The snowballs shatter. The boys go home. Beneath me the ice splits.