Manhattan's torch is burning bright tonight--
the sky is as bruised and pink as my inner thighs
and as pale as the blush of fever in a virgin's cheeks.
Love has returned to me in a form I never thought
to look for in my unconscious desires,
and Love's cousins, Desire and Trust,
are coming back within two weeks.

There's burning in my hands tonight--
the sting you receive when you catch your own fall
but too late to save your knees from tiny pebbles.
I can see my wounds, Love's gone and ripped open
scars that had long healed over,
claiming the pain would stretch and grow inside me
into ability, confidence and eventually beauty.

Desire's on her streetcar, making her way
across the plains like a fish across a desert;
she sends her devotion and empathy.
Trust is sailing in on a float in a parade,
winding its way from Greenwich village
all the way to my doorstep,
to help me extract the fragments of ashpalt
from the wounds that Love has opened back up.