Perfect

is not what I was
though you said I was
in an apartment in St. Louis
on a green shag carpet redolent
of the previous renter's cat.
Above all things I am accurate.

So what to say of the sunlight?
Nothing.

In the 21^st century, there's nothing
to say about sunlight which lasted
as long as it takes to have sex, and
made us feel as warm as humans get,

perfectly human, perfectly warm,
though, sadly, you don't remember this.

Though, sadly, I remember this, and
it still makes me angry—
which is another word for sad
as well as a synonym for nothing.
Though if anything is,

your sadness is perfect,
your human disappointment,
which you've raised like a baby
in a black Baby Bjorn,

coaxing it into the best sadness
anything warm could hope for.
Your sadness gets a perfect score,
a 1600 on the GRE,

but if I had a gun,
I'd shoot your sadness through
the knee. Then the head.
Or if I were a goddess,

I'd turn you to a tree with silver leaves
or a flower with a center as yellow as sunlight,
like they used to do when saving the beautiful from themselves.