Solar Flare

I’m not afraid of the solar flare!

I just wake at night for the excitement:

the pink-throated, tight-drawn adrenaline

that paints every face under thirty-five.

Me, whose fingerbeds stain your fabric

red with cherry juice – you think I won’t

sleep with sugar on my teeth? I think

I sleep where the pillow is softest: under my head.

And I think the sunbeams will spill pink and red

across my skin as I rouse, the rouge of dawn

upon your phoenix lips rising slyly

from the embers of my still-smoldering dream.

You think the sunlight won’t ever stop!

But when it does, we will greet that nighttime

with veins so full of blood that the sun’s red glow

suffuses through our human skin instead.