IRISES You cut back the irises, spent stalks and vulvar blooms vanished. Summer riots in violet and white. You kneel between rows, knees dirty, hair coming undone from a messy braid. Your hands rake the earth like they rake my naked back, searching. Uproot bulbs, cup their vegetal testes gently, shake the dirt from each one you unearth. Your eager hands paw through a disrupted garden, afternoon slanting across your sweaty upper lip. This is how I love you most— undone, unearthed, laid out on the soil where I can brush September from you.
Aruni Wijesinghe is a project manager, ESL teacher, erstwhile belly dance instructor and occasional sous chef; she now, strangely, adds poet to this list. Her debut poetry collection, 2 Revere Place, is a love letter to her family and miraculous childhood in New York. You can follow her at www.aruniwrites.com.
All rights © Aruni Wijesinghe
a moon of one's own 