I told the zucchini
my secrets last night.
It said nothing
but it softened in my hand.
I don’t want fertility, exactly.
I want decomposition
with benefits.
I want my longing
to get moldy,
to bubble a little.
I want to whisper
into a bed of rotting lettuce
and have it whisper back:
you were always edible, baby,
you just needed to wilt a bit.
My compost pile is
not a metaphor,
it’s a relationship archive.
There’s the rind of our last trip,
the pit of that argument,
a peel still sticky with
what we almost became.
I buried your name
in coffee grounds,
but it keeps sprouting
mushrooms shaped
like little hearts
that know too much.
I sit beside the steaming heap
and tell it:
I’m not ready to grow again,
but I am ready to stink
in new directions.
Let the worms have me.
Let the queer earth
suck me back into itself.
I don’t need seeds
if I can be soil.