is whatever you want it to be.
I wait for the day’s fog
to lift

to watch the sky shift
from brushed metal
to crystalline lake. I wait

for you to arrive
wearing that cappuccino
comfort sweater

and those moldy berry jeans.
I wait in the dooryard
for raucous rust

birds

to land on the wrought-iron
fence painted the same
shade of prairie winter

as the trim on the house
we once shared. I wait
for the singing to begin

when I open the exit sign
hued gate—the one
that matches the color

of a silence I find inside. I wash
my hands. I wait no more
for everything to bleed into itself.