4 am

i sit outside in the sun in front of the house i rent. i sit under the apple tree on the wide blue side of the steps with my feet in front of me and my book in my lap. the sun is hot and sucks blotchy patterns out of my chest and the tops of my legs and stomach, an oblong red lace of heat rash. the man around whom i order my time is coming to see me. this will be the end of it, he's leaving. i do not know yet about the new smells, how my sheets aren't going to be the same, how his absence is the shape that is missing, the straight black hairs that aren't mine, haunting. he sits on the steps beneath me and puts his lips in my palm, closed. a fleshy ontology, i know everything after touch; this mute sob is dry and warm. his panic is quiet and slow, he doesn't seem to know. the answer is elsewhere, he plans to flee immediately. i stroke his hair with my other hand, not slowly enough, maybe, to be soothing because my pulse is fast and my appendages follow it. i want to put words and names on things. the last pink blooms from the apple tree have blown, and with them the bees are gone, their thick honey-drone, the unquenchable thirst for nectar. magnolia buds rise from the waxy leaves that surround them, waiting to open like the  satin dressed singer at a twenties cabaret bar, unfold fleshy, like human fists, like cheeks, unbearably soft looking. the smell of jasmine as it claws over fences, through my palms and out of my mouth, blossoming whitely all over my silence.