Droplets. Clumping molecules.

Leaves' breaths
on the backs of cars
that only through water were—

and then were only ever

particular ghosts—

a neon peridot.

​

The pollen falls around,

pushes back
through nostrils,
sifts in lashes,

lands in beds

under eyelids.

​

We pull our eyelids
at their sheeted corners,
as if to press the eye all the more

toward the bloom,
the dusty after-center of nature's

first derivation.