I. Brattle St.
In
the
bookstore
sprawled among
rare books, you read me
passages from your favorites.
Poetry is our code. Each breath, the subtext. I fall
in and out of love with your voice, the juxtaposition of crests and breaks alike, mouth
pulling like the moon. Here, everything is romantic. Every collar, stitch, insignia, typo; each story a letter to some muse or
other touched with the stuff of epics or novels. What makes history, or love? I could more
easily love a poem than a person, though the
people mold words like occupation.
This is our memoir,
archived by
date with
our
names.
II. Coffee Break
And
I
take my
coffee the
way I take my women:
black, you say, jokingly, but I
remember this as I fix my coffee, out of milk again.
Part of me has this will to impress even the hints of rolled tobacco you leave behind
on your breath, scattered on your desk amongst your books and pens, in your bed sheets, like sand sprinkled for you to sleep. This, in essence, defines you:
haphazard, like yellow, like caution tape, but some endearing kind, pulling me close and
it's as if your mouth, my memory is stained
with these parts of you, the naked
kiln-fired parts I can
swallow if
and when
I
choose.
III. Masada
On
top
of the
world, I
observe the lowest
point I could float in, feet shuffling
the ground, in excavation of earth of soul of the
most well-rounded rock to bring you-There is no point in sleep here; the Romans never did. This was their lookout
point and before that King Herod's vacation spot. I found your rock in his pool, where he used to lay out, women fanning him with palm fronds. What
a life he must have had, albeit fleeting. And I find it difficult to imagine
ruins as fortress, rubble as intimidating.
I stand here, picture myself at
surface level and
I will not
open
my
eyes.
