April 2009

Lover, I’ve made you a paper lilac after spending some time at the tree. I think the construction is right, a few scraps, wound into strands, making a coiled vine that accumulates into bunch blossoms.

When you ...]]> by REBECCA DINERSTEIN

April 2009

Lover, I’ve made you a paper lilac
after spending some time at the tree.
I think the construction is right,
a few scraps, wound into strands, making
a coiled vine that accumulates into bunch blossoms.

When you come to get it,
I will insist that you take my top off
and you will attribute its fragrance to my skin.
We are good liars and good kissers.

Eventually, I will go with a stranger
to the tree and lie there with him,
not picking the lilacs, which will feel very romantic,
not promising to fashion anything in his image
or the image of nature, not comparing this lilac
to the one before it, only reckoning how much longer
the sun will be up, and reveling in how dusk
takes the color off flowers and puts it behind them.
The night lands. It is not like red, or even black.

Rebecca Dinerstein is a senior in Yale College.