On Dating a Woman After Dating a Man

by ellora sutton

My face pushed into the pillow I guess he could see the gold-plated

clasp of my green glass necklace, my hair everywhere in its blonde

and bronze and dark, its ringlets and bangles.

He said: God, you look so expensive.

It was good. But she calls me Rose, Rosy Girl, and it’s about more than

just flowers, my obsessions, my tarot: my future, she tells me, is

everything and I have a singing voice meant for long journeys.

Look, she says, the sky is a woman!

Waiting for her in the station bookshop between trains, I pick up a

June Jordan paperback and open it at random to ‘Poem #2 for

Inaugural Rose’:

nothing about you

reminds me of money.