after Terrance Hayes

Beneath your eyelids are two starlings
bathing in the puddle last night's rain left.
They rock back and forth, feathers quaking lightly
my lips the subtle heat of dawn over the birds
sign enough to shiver off the last drops of the bath
and get on to flying.

Which is to say, when you open your eyes
the sea's expanse becomes the coastline
becomes the river and its riverbed
becomes the path of the migratory bird
of the monarch and its gold flecked wing
like the freckles over your cheekbone
which once I thought were shards of the sun
as if the sun's face could be kissed.

It’s a good thing you are not the sun
but a small, mortal canvas for her light.

If you were the sun,
I could not lay my lips against your eyelids
nor listen to the strange bird
that stirs under the thinnest skin.