Having a crush means this structure
will one day come crumbling.
You come home high and stare at
the mirror and tell me maybe everything
will be better with makeup.

I ask what this means and
you hold your birthday crayons
over a blank page and draw
a tomato garden, a vine in a vase–
though in the soil someone has
lodged a cigarette still burning.

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Fall 2019)