[ … ]

Divorce is plastered in red on the outside wall as an advertisement. 
As an enticement. Sort of like, come and get your divorce today! Usually, 

when I think about separation it is that of the oil and buttered peanuts 
or that of the father and child. Such rules made to be broken 

for the sake of betterment. I love you most when running past 
all the butterflies that have already left the cocoon. When you point out 

each and every single one. And then say something dumb like:
The word ruminate came from the poet rumi. Imagine decaying into a word.

When I say I want to master the art of departure what I mean is, 
I never want to leave you. Never ever ever. In the right ecosystem, you 

were the fury seed from the wiser dandelion I had wished upon before 
it returned back to me. The vehicle to wish upon and the wish itself. 

So much of inhaling involves exhaling. All of my exhaling involves you.
There is a monarch butterfly who appeared several times in our yard 

and each time I fought an urge to tie it to a leash and call it my second love. 
terrance hayes once wrote that everything is a metaphor for sex, but 

everything is a metaphor for power. Even sex. Even leashes, even the butterflies 
checking to see if…Every time we kiss 

I control time with my hands. Every time I see the monarch I am obliged 
to remember him beautiful. Another indication of power. 

The branches were forever ruminating above the leaves.

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Rishona Michael is a Brooklyn based poet. A graduate of the Sarah Lawrence College MFA’s program where she won an Academy of American Poets University Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from No, Dear, Sho Journal, Poets.org, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, and more. She has received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts, reads for Pigeon Pages, and teaches poetry courses through GrubStreet. In 2025, she became the Poetry Coalition Fellow for Kundiman.