fingers shake, skin tears
higher up the mountainside:
the climber's vision

the crow is dead and its eyes were open
and it had fallen off a branch, maybe
and it could have been sleeping,
body slumped in the dewy boulevard grass this morning,
but its eyes were open
and crows don't sleep that way.

I was surprised because death hides in all places,
except a ******.

it will not end here.

you, the one with violets in her lap,
the one, despite her mortality, that only gods may approach,
look at me

no truth was found in the fragments of sappho,
but what lies in all those lost to another time?

the booth we all covet
is open and i sit in it alone
taking up all this space
so that i can try not to fall asleep
as i read and listen to music
and procrastinate on my laptop
and look at my phone
and feel the absences and the losses
of nameless entities
i am romanticizing the drone learning has become

A person who lived it up in his youth dies in old age in misery.

do it,
the duet
the one where you turn and I grin and you stop and I spin
and the music never stops and becomes white noise and then one with silence
and when we still the clocks stop but the music never slows

spring is eternal,
slow coming after three seasons of waiting.

I ponder on these summer months,
of endless hours with thousands of people passing through,
but all I remember is your smile,
and our overlapping knees.