waiting for laundry to finish justwrite

You embroider your name onto flower petals, pluck them one by one and ask the hot, still air if you will ever be loved. In the mornings, the teapot in the kitchen is out of tune and I hear you whistling in the shower when really you're hours away, days if I walk, my bare feet pounding asphalt until my arches are gone. Sometimes I think the world really is flat, the frozen surface of the pond sticking to the snow in January, the tops of biscuits before they rise, soft, pale breasts suddenly full of breath. I write down my dreams so I can walk away when I find you. I stitch your name into my pillowcases and sleep with my cheek flat against the mattress, pillows on the floor. Today the sky smells like church, full of dust and hope, too much music and not enough words. My mouth tastes like flour. The tadpoles in the pond are slowly growing legs, and I wonder if they will walk before they jump. I string what I've seen today onto a chain, each image a pearl, hang it around the neck of the moon and wait for tonight's first star. The teapot sings mismatched lullabies in the kitchen next to a bouquet spelling a name I can't remember. Tomorrow I will pluck petals and leave them in the wind, hold the curved face of the earth in my hands and tell her I feel nothing but love. In the moments after, the air will taste like hope and dust, sunlight falling across my skin in lines that I can almost read.