Before I started to love you,
I tried to love the world:

the plump, dumb oranges that crushed
in my mouth, the waves that rolled upshore

until they were eyelid thin and purple.
And the girls who lined up to buy pops

in their small bright suits, the ones who slouched
and let their sandy thighs and ankles

go unbrushed: tried to love them
without seeming to, to watch

with an indifference I could wear.
Afternoons, they leaned against each other

picking out shapes in the clouds.
They weren't girls to throw their hair

before them, to dry it in the sun.
Still, their hair dried in the sun.

You could tell it would be a long time
before they would be bent

down to the kind of love
from which they could not right themselves.

It was a long time before I saw
the slivered moon is no scythe; it is not blade

or pool: we cannot see ourselves there.
It is only from here that it changes,

looks small as a thumbnail,
something to offer you

like the blonding shoreline, like myself.
As if that is what the world is for.