Lost Details

I.

Your mustache looked
like the silhouette of an umbrella
sprawled over your lips -
the color of midnight,
the texture of grass;
leaving a line down your philtrum
a gap
through which tears can race
sing ballads and praise, 
and vanish
without a trace.

II.

Janice Rodriguez -
I saw you, yesterday,
Staring at a cabbage.
Mumbling a telephone number
Tied to your braids;
Your hair as thick as the Bible.
Your eyes, so large
and round,
You could fit into them
a zoo,
an elm,
a library of candles,
and Saturn.

III.

While reading a stanza
from Goethe's Prometheus,
I looked up
and noticed
on the bowl of the spoon,
an inverted image of the world outside.
Clouds floating.
The sky in labor.

I picked it up,
and gave a lick,
tasting clouds,
water,
and in turn,
a corner of the Universe.

IV.

Helen,
Do you think peacocks
or butterflies
wonder about their destinies?
Do lilies cry?
Do cherry blossoms make love?
Do finches discriminate
against the colors of their beaks?

V.

My name
is Tony Roy -
A biracial fruit
of a Spanish mother and an Indian father,
with skin
the color of burnt sulfur.

What I do
a majority of my evenings
is listen to the limericks
of your Polaroid shutters,
count my breaths,
play piano to the rain,
and applaud.