The Color of Sunlight

She says she wants to keep me

a secret.

Queer love like some moonflower

blooming only in darkness.

And yes, that nectar is sweet

and it stirs awake butterflies in me.

But with nowhere to go,

those butterflies in my stomach

crawl up my throat

and cease—

crumpled bodies in my closed mouth,

yellow wings between my teeth.

Sunlight is not the color you think.

She writes love letters on my body,

a language written in invisible ink.

She says to me, “You are the poem the sky writes

at sunset and sunrise.”

Orange, yellow, pink, a splattered nectarine.

Bursting with color, and the only time I can see her:

between sunset and sunrise.

Imminently dissolving.

Disappearing, I am bright but fleeting.

Look how easily I become nothing.

Like those colors in the sky

that evaporate quick as her hand in mine.

I want to say to her,

I am not just the sunset, the sunrise.

You forget, the sun appears to be coming and going

but you are the one who is doing the rotating.

The sun is always here. I am always here.

Sunlight is every color.

Rainbows are just the constant sunlight

seen spread out, a peacock display

of the pride that was hidden, refracted through the rain.

I want to say,

The color of our love is sunlight through mist.

Rainbows don’t exist in the dark,

and I want to exist.