Daphne, NY by Patricia Karunungan

Winters in New York are so cold.
Every year I watch the wind split
open your lips, and I wonder if,

like the rings on the bark of trees, I
would be able to tell from the lines
how many people you’ve kissed. But

I can only count with my mouth. Winter
means I have to stop mapping the
geography of your lips as the fissures

bloom and blood like lava unmakes
the state lines. Sappho was on to
something when she said that love

is paralysis. The ground beneath us
keeps changing. Remember when you
drove upstate to surprise me with flowers

your tires burst from all the potholes on
the road through Winchester. You made
me promise to leave Long Island in the

spring, but the walls in Manhattan are
so thin. Last night I heard your neighbours
making love and the thudding of their

headboard matched the beating in my
breast as I watched you turn your back
to me in the half-light. I didn’t understand

the charm of suffering for love until I
realised I had already carved you into
my skin. Where you’re from, there

are already plenty of laurel trees. Stay.
Still, like the first woman desire turned
into a tree. Grow roots and send them

underground to me, to the arteries I’ve
sunk beneath the fissures of your lips,
burning in the lava of your touch leaving

me again. Winters in New York are so cold
the trees have been burned bare into
skeletons. Save for one. Save for me.