Cover

Soon I will not cover her.
Soon I will not give her shade.
By no choice of mine begins
gravity’s one consequence.

She came to me for protection.
She came to me to cool.
She came to me to camouflage
what no one else would hide.
She came to me to heal
from what she could not admit.

I have covered her white limbs.
I have born the mid-day heat,
but summer is dying.
I see, as one waking,
what I was all along.
I will shrivel, hunch, and fall.