& the matching blazer, too — all of those sequins flirting with the light like every one of them is trying to fall in love tonight, they are new & eager & trembling against their stitches, much like how my breath flutters & forgets itself every time i see you across the room, every time. it looked so lifeless on its hanger, still until its first sharp gasp as i dragged its zipper up your spine like a tongue, & yes, i'm not ashamed to admit i counted each sequin as i did so, eager, exalting. the neckline, dripping so far down i dropped to my knees so my mouth might catch its kaleidoscopic splatter. still, though, i thought first of the body below, sweetened curve of shoulder & the hip sugared when i craved salt, i imagined lifting the gold necklace like a veil to taste what trace of metal might remain. what is beauty, i thought, if not what my lover bares to me in the dark? what lies shadowed beneath my lover's shadow? how wrong i was — hours later i see you across the room, peacock flocked by other brilliant birds, constellations orbit around you & my pulse forgets its place, the flowers on my own dress straining towards your sun. you laugh & the champagne shivers in every glass. everyone loves you here, all of our hearts standing in ovation, our eyes gilded with honey from its comb. how lucky we are to see your dress's debut. a coronation, a crown too tender to be gold. at first i saw each sequin as a mirror reflecting, but now i know them all to be prisms refracting you & your infinite wonder, your spectrum of limitless love, streaming out & striking like lightning gentled by your touch. what is beauty? this is it, i think, everything everything all all. the dress, the matching blazer, & how they summon you to the surface, all yourself & in this moment most yourself, your release & return, loved, beloved, comet speeding towards an open-armed crowd, gold dust shed from a fruit-skinned star, a gift, a gifting, a blossom forge, petals & pleasure cracking the anvil open like a window & broken like a fever — my lover (you) every mode of glitter stands before me in a gown. each breath i take is drawn like water from your well. here: let me give as i have been given to. later, i'll unclench the zipper's teeth as i tug it down your back, but for now, let me just sip at your shimmer, let it split me open from the inside out.

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
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