Steps ricochet off old bathroom tiles

and spill music into the neighborhood

gingerly. She lets me feel her

scars, each twisting and coiling an ombre

of sculpted garnets and amethysts, trailing

along basins of candy-flavored milk. We scrape

our palms against monkey bars boiling

under a feverish late-summer sky

and hurl scooters into an open fountain--

mid-suspense vacancy.

The neighborhood is curiously hushed

against untamed daylight. 

Her fingers are soaked in lychee

juice, whisking away at the black and white keys

of a 19th century piano. She wears her persona

with dancing fortitude, eyes deeper than a

starless night, burying banes of

her roots within her emeralds and opals.

We veil ourselves within the eclipse

of her closet as hiders among multi-colored

treasures. She’s topaz, the smell of

saccharine tangerines ripening and spoiling

under a marmalade-splayed sky, and I’m

aquamarine, the taste of blue crayons

on my tongue that summer afternoon.

She lets me paint on her body, so I brush away

scars that run across fingertips to ankles

and back. I sprawl planets and their moons across

flushed sepia skin, connecting comets and stars

along garnets and amethysts, emeralds and opals.

Light casts on her back, flashing hues of

valor and awakening.

Ma, I say. A galaxy.