International Rose Test Garden

There is silence and solar wind in the International Rose Test Garden

The sun hung heavy and yellow

Warm, diffused, as if through mosquito netting

Silence and distant sounds

The wind curls and whistles in my eardrums

Slides, entangled, across earlobes

The cool breeze that has traveled from the distant mountains

Hanging in their blue haze

We came here together but he is out of sight around some bend.

Embalmed like this in my glowing veil

He could almost not be here,

Never have been here.

In the novocaine sun-heat 

Where my memories shimmer like a mirage

I am only an unsteady conviction away

From being alone.