you stand on the corner of your just-gone home, dirt from below the torn-up asphalt making its way beneath your sunglasses, the distance between now and then something you can no longer stretch your knees and step over. your first love is boarded up across the street, succumbed finally to the burn of nineteen’s shallow pockets and standing in the way of a new apartment complex. you walk on, humming so you can’t hear the heavy step of all that’s taking your place. it’s a strain on your ventricles, loving and losing and owning and letting go, when you’re here again. knowing the porch’s soft wood at number 18 while the door is bolted and a stranger’s boots line your closet floor.

it’s not all lockouts and dire prognoses. your tomorrow professes to accommodate a higher wattage than the sconces in your old room, and your visits taste like love and memory and breakfast, and his bed is warmer than your own because he’s in it, and he welcomes you home like that’s what it still is. it feels like he’s not wrong to say so—sometimes, you still belong there. cold coffee in hand from the farthest corner where they know your order still. an opinion on which pizza joint has better marinara. a favorite bathroom. an indelible mark on your old library desk. some of it is yours.

but some of it isn’t. some never was, and some has slipped through your fingers. you hum a little louder as the months go by and the boarded windows give way to a brand-new storefront—one that never knew you at nineteen—so you can’t hear the heavy step of all that’s taking your place. but you keep coming back.

you rise before the morning does, watch the black
sky go gray through the shower curtain
lacy shadows cast on summer-night skin
not ready to awaken, blue eyes half-mast to
squint away the fluorescent intrusion as your
mother butters toast for you that you leave behind,
your stomach sleeping too.

yawning, you thank god that the possums are
exercising better judgment as you hold
the wheel at eight and four, shake your knees
at every stoplight, sing billy joel top-volume
to stay alert while the clouds go pink and gold.

you join the real-world almost right away,
asleep before you hit the tracks at westport
tickets tickets tickets grabs your ear, but only just.

your coffee cools in its thermos, forgotten in the
new haven line haze, your nerves all perked up
fighting with the fog between your ears. your nerves
all perked up. your nerves all perked up. you try to
kick the fog to no avail. you all but sleepwalk
down the platform, you barely watch the gap.

hey, wouldn’t it be crazy if he came your dream-voice
whispers to your conscious yes it would be crazy your
conscious chuckles at the thought.

you trip on the overweight businessman’s pennyloafer
and you think how much you need to *** and you toss
your cold bagel in the all aboard trash can and you
think about how crazy you would be to hope to see him
and you hope your backpack isn’t slowing traffic too
much and your nerves all perked up your nerves all
perked up and you shake away the fog one last time and
you get to the end of the long hot platform and you—

hey wouldn’t it be crazy if but yes he’s
there and yes you
don’t know
what to
say but
yes your
eyes wide yes
mouth open
yes you don’t
know what
to say but

*hi,
I love you,
yes

crash crash crash was the calm smooth
hudson current
percolating like your
electric kettle soul
earl grey hands wrapped around

crash on the pillowtop
the closest thing to injury you knew
the still crash the
crash they bottle on the radio for you
crash lulls you to sleep
crash crash crash all you heard
all you wanted all you didn’t know—

mirrors shatter
mercedes tangle with birchbark
little quarterbacks forget their names at 22


hello?



he drops the phone
forgets how to
pick it up
you fall in line
try to
forget too

small pieces of paper stuck to her molars
she wasn’t from the country she said she was from
ex-PAT! her charming garbled R’s were
gone that one night.

we all said, J’ACCUSE! and she was like, what
because she wasn’t french.
she could’ve passed though,

if she kept her tongue quiet. I mean,
it moved the right way, at least.
and she was beautiful, if I may speak so plainly
and very susceptible to the cold—
blue-white hands tucked up into sleeves
when she sat hunched over with a hot tea listening
to a radio broadcast from 1970.

it was in san francisco that she fell in love
(not with anyone in particular, but that’s almost
always how it works, non?)
after 1970, but she hardly knew the difference
except that the cars were more aerodynamic
and all the boys had names like Blake and James
and Noah and it was harder to come by a bed for the night.

she had small lungs, the better for whispering, but she
felt like she was more grand than a whisper.

french girls could whisper and still be grand (ma chérie)
so when she packed up and erased the country, she took
a new name, more cosmopolitan, with her,

ma chérie.

what do you learn but how to close your door when it’s coming
what do you
what do you learn but how to only whisper, never yell
only let them see you when you’re pretty
only let him touch you when you’re cold

since the morning you allowed it I’ve taken full advantage of your loving me
I’ve watered my impatiens with your loving me
I’ve thrown back my gin and tonics with your loving me in mind

and I haven’t paid it forward
I haven’t paid it lateral
I haven’t paid
haven’t paid for anything
and they’re catching up to me
the barkeep thinks I’m new in town
the doorman shakes his head

and the door keeps revolving as he stays obsolete

I keep loving you inside my scarf
and the wind takes it
when february comes

you’re tall now and your elegant shoulders are
rolled back and your collarbone frames your diamond
pendant like a picture
you don’t always wear the athenian owl anymore
you’re a little past your own poetry

they’ll all say my
how you’ve grown
haven't you

one thousand four hundred and sixty or something like that
fewer days than words from whitman’s mouth
makes sense. he knows more than I’ve learned so far.

but I’ve learned, so far. let’s get a little saccharine
sometimes the mosquito bite on your brain lasts years longer than it deserves
and you can’t walk away till you’ve walked together for awhile

sometimes someone else picks you up at the corner and
you wish he would’ve been there all along and then you
realize thank god he wasn’t cause he’s
beautiful but there’s no bigger beautiful than the
beautiful you squeeze into your final days

and he’s beautiful.
you’ve lost count of the drinks thrown back that brought you
to all the doorsteps you never would’ve seen
all the mouths you’ve already sort of forgotten

and the nights with your legs resting on
the legs of people you love with more love than—

here is where you learned to say I love you
sometimes
and when you can’t, to say something else
squeeze a hand

here is where you slapped somebody’s shadowed cheek
and found the remote house that’s kind of home
and where you’ll have to go away
but not without leaving
a little bit of you
everywhere