(2nd draft)

Lemon sun leaks
through the reflection

of a window,

you stroke my palm

with green fingers
as she whispers
in four languages

behind my back.

It is still cheating,

you said, Just because

she is a woman.

I am not above

hitting a woman.

I pressed my idiolect

between paper feathers.

The train rushes
ginger cornfields,
hedgerows dashed
with violet.

On our return, an old

woman sits by the roadside

holding a cardboard box

full of torn paper tickets

and small, yellow-bird

fortunes.