Faces, limbs,
Glitter, sweat
Concealment
Debris
Gutter-trapped
Occasional treasures
Shining brightly, briefly
Glimpses of original packaging
places untouched by the dulling bleach of light and time
Fresh-looking facades that harbor disease-
the soft, dank giving way of decay
Slight moments of concord,
communion,
    connection.
Debris that longs to be fairy-taled,
that believes in the magic of changelings
One clean, pure shoe
on the steps of this stage.
Tomorrow –Cinderella.

This was it:
The broken seat,
the precipitous stairs,
the heads of sleepy metal beasts mounted on the wall
places that felt full but were empty.
We mingled brain stems, exchanged heads.
I traded my hypothalamus for your frontal lobe.
Moths un-attracted to light,
we flickered in the dark,
weightless yet burdened-
this dirigible in my chest
Alone in a crowd you whisper
What if?
What if….

Slow sparks
Vegetable love
you are planted and, nature
mirroring nature,
grow
This snail love,
rippling, wavering, creasing itself to move forward
We knit ourselves,
pulling strand through
strand through
strand to tie ourselves in knots,
weaving ourselves into the fabric of this-
our foxhole, our fort, our rampart
That implacable Indian,
the stacks of shoes,
and the gritty plates:
the objects that know our rhythms
My secret bear/troll,
wild and woolly
growling our hidden jokes and unseen whispers
unscripted for once
unprepared
Like two sailors
we frantically navigate these waters,
desperate to drown ourselves:
shipwrecked,
submerged,
surfaced, and
returned.
Outside our cave we smile in code.
You and I and the Indian
keep our own counsels.