“Blood Orange Nights” (or what I think about when I think about these earrings)

My lips stick free of the pavement that you walked

Slowly by

I like the movement

The action

Or absence of

Slowly

To measure the time

Between my hips

For a second

For a second glance

Am I worth that

And if you were my dance floor

The floorboards

I’d shake you up something dirty

Between my toes

The songs we once knew

The ones we memorized

In the backseats of vinyl blue

Plump to our backsides

You should have shared your middle name with me back then

Back when my grandmother was still alive

Hers was Mary

Or was it Alice

Or Frances

Maybe she was actually your grandmother

And not mine

It’s all the same divinity and shine

Along with the shame on me

With your crooked finger

But we danced

And I always forgave you

Rickety sticks

And cat-eyed love

I will dance myself dirty into this fire

So that our grandmothers can use my ash

To etch our story into their mountainsides