Feet interlocked under the table
elbows and coffee cups on it —
You're losing limbs now.
Yesterday when I walked home
in the chatter of drunk men,
sandals rubbing across gravel
and music
from a ringing cellphone
or the television from an old restaurant,
I was becoming someone else.
Catapulted words and trees that never forget —
You're only half a torso and a face,
maybe missing an ear.
Eight hundred miles then a thousand and eight hundred,
I still walk the same walk
and say those same things.
Round and round and round,
and you're just two eyes and a sweet smell.
I'm smiling wide across a table
and the sky is swirling.
The days last longer now,
and no one knows me.
Dessert, dancing and starry eyes —
You're nothing now.

Maybe we imagined magic
where it wasn't there.
Looking back at those places we went to,
it's more ordinary than I remember it.
I wonder ―
Doesn't morning-light make everything beautiful?
then why do the roads look empty?
The red booth, faded?
Why is the terrace bland
with puddles of rain?
There's a chance I will never see you again,
and we will go on remembering this
as we remember it.
The grainy streetlight,
silhouette-trees, look in our eyes ―
Maybe we imagined magic
where it wasn't there.
But maybe there was magic
in the attempt,
all along.

I'm lying next to you,
knowing daylight will soon
slowly fill this room and
I will see you;
You will see me.
Here at twenty one
on a low mattress in a small living room somewhere,
we are falling asleep together.
Now at forty-seven,
while it's still
dark in the morning,
I still
feel the same.
Maybe some things always live,
like the man in Paris who always wore his hat or
that balcony with the light always, inexplicably on
or two people who kept seeing each other throughout their lives
in in-between's.
Years of "Goodbye, darling" and ending up where we started,
is an odd story.
Cold December at sixty-one,
maybe we will laugh about it with tea and something to eat
but now,
look ―
the room around us is painted in morning light and I see you.
Do you see
me?

Tomorrow I will go on like yesterday, you know ―
Same 'ol waking up, hot bath then smear peach-pink on each eyelid.
It's not an emergency,
but that Portuguese song about the serene farm
–a happy place―
reminds me of you.
Today I stirred my tea for longer,
lost in thought,
lost in repercussion,
lost.
It's not an emergency,
but I dreamt of us in a balcony at night;
sparkling eyes and wine.
I know I'm not extraordinary.
I was made to collect seashells in silence at windy seashores;
woman making boats of paper napkins at cafés and throwing it away.
It's not an emergency,
but were you looking for extraordinariness?
Did you find it in yourself?
A sad poem and glistening eyes in the dark ―
My last memory of you is from years ago.
We left this story where it was, maybe finished it,
I'm never sure.
It's not an emergency,
but I think we will meet again somewhere.
And midst champagne flutes and people's side profiles,
I will recognize you.

I don't need much from you.
I don't need promises, or a double bed or your truths.
I have lived a life enough to appreciate the little things
I have.
I have spent enough afternoons lying in monsoon's damp heat,
listening to crickets chirp,
a particular rat's squeaking,
whistling birds at a distance..
to know,
what matters the most.
Maybe I need from you most, to exist. Promise to be real in present time;
say for sure that you will look at me, and touch me
and wander with me.
I don't want you to be mine or make me yours.
I can't assure you I wouldn't change. But if you still always exist, somewhere, somehow in time
...I promise to stroke your back till you fall asleep,
and make you pots of tea.
Just live here, touch my cheek
and when you're walking too fast,
stop once to let me catch up.
You keep walking and waking;
dreaming, typing, eating, singing that song about blue skies.
Times I stroke your knuckles with my fingertips
when we are sitting together,
maybe hold my hand or...
look at me sometimes like you know me.
And in return my darling,
I promise you ― my heart and goldfish kisses.

And what happens to the teacups after we've left?
Clinking, clanging at the table;
carried, catapulted, cleaned.
Do they know of our lips that tasted of each other,
or things said, unsaid?
Where do eight years go?
Just, ****!!
― gone.
Or still occurring
in folds between our conscious blinks, our separate times midst now and then.
Do you and I exist again?
and again, and again?
Crossing the street again;
in the grass, under the blanket,
at the park again?
Are we kissing
again?
The lights and the people,
brown irides and darker pupils of this stranger,
and I,
round and round on this merry-go-round
― it's déjà vu.
Am I in the 'Again'?
Maybe déjà vu is Again, after all.
I'm at the beach once more;
they've built new houses.
You must've changed as well;
built new houses.
But I only remember old handwriting,
legs on legs, eating at 5am, icecube dragged across my skin;
I remember you in Agains.
Clinking, clanging at the table,
our teacups.
carried, catapulted, cleaned,
brought again ―
Maybe they
have seen ghosts of us
over again.

Your hand feels warm and it's nice, while floating in this cold, dark sky. The stars around us seem so big
and close to us,
but I haven't been able to touch one. Darling, how did we end up here; do you remember?
I can only recall cucumbers cut in circles and condensation on your glass of lemonade, from an afternoon.
We were moving
and dreaming in the world and our head was full of thought.
Now here in this starry nothingness, what do we think about?
How do you make a life, in complete stillness?
Maybe we could collect stars till the end of time
or become delicate ballet dancers.
We could spread the soft moon between Jupiter slices; make sandwiches for dinner.
Tears become diamonds here,
floating as if to a sweet nocturne on an invisible piano,
as I cry for all the people I have left behind.
All I wish for now
is to be remembered as love.
To have only been the sunlight flooding through open windows in dusty, abandoned houses;
I wish only to be remembered
as love.
I hope as we learn to live here we find happiness.
But I hope dear,
that even in our newfound joy
we never forget, the smell of a ripe orange, the taste of sour, summer breeze on a grassy hilltop or the colours of an ocean.
Okay,
let's go now,
sing songs we remember and pick a bright planet to call home!