Sunrise over Perugia is not the same
as the one that burns windows back home—
it’s paler, color-teased, and eaten
with apricot jam;p/>
a morning for cream birds, dots of white
that stroll in a shapeless cloud.
I feel new, open-door cold,
bones blowing with the olive wind,
and I don’t know if I can return again;
I don’t know if my mother will recognize
this breech-birthed girl, soft-skinned something,
painted in one hundred hues of light.
I don’t know if I can wake up and forgive
every future morning for caring less than this.
The sun passes above bell towers,
houses saturate with moving life,
and I step out the door as the day carries on,
flecked with dry fog and thin Assisi perfume.