Natalie Diaz

The war ended

depending on which war you mean

There are wildflowers in my desert

which take up to twenty years to bloom.

Until then, we touch our bodies like wounds—

the war never ended and somehow begins again

This could be a story from the Bible,

if it wasn’t already a story about stars

Let me call my anxiety, desire, then.

Let me call it, a garden.

Maybe this is what Lorca meant

when he said, verde que te quiero verde—

because when the shade of night comes,

I am a field of it, of any worry ready to

[flower in my chest.

Insomnia is like spring that way—surprising

and many petaled,

the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow.

I am struck in the witched hours of want—

I want her green life. Her inside me

in a green hour I can’t stop.

All my loves

are reparations loves

What is loneliness if not unimaginable

light and measured in lumens—

am doing my best to not become a museum

of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out.

I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.

I am less than myself. Only a fraction

of a body, let’s say, I am only a hand—

and when I slip it beneath the shirt of my lover

I disappear completely.