When the kitchen window is ajar,
in the early hours of a May morning,
the mandarin spirits return.
The seasonal breeze wafts the warmth
and covenant of adolescent privilege
in tendrils encircling my bare arms.
They are beginning to soften like peaches.
The most beautiful part of a woman's body,
blocking the setting summer sun,
is the corona blazing from her pliant, blond arm,
after a season of salvation.
The tang of oranges
drifting purposefully into my nostrils
reminds me of this
yet one more year,
as if the notion were pungently
and outrageously new.