Vicious afternoons

A thought, soft lips enfold
the breast
gentle garments, those lips,
they are unlike the spirit of your shoulder blade
a threat so sweet, terrain claimed with a breath
from the boughs of yesterdays.

Outside again falling inert in warmth
a sunflower blooms a single leaf of winter flakes.
One day or two, three weeks, say yesterday,
and I am late on a vicious
afternoon.

That it was once, so long ago
those lips profess that day
as they are drenched in the warmth and cold
of ever yielding snows,
from an imagined memory, inert.​