it was fall yet I dreamt of february air
and the waters of march
I wanted to play it right, become an animal,
obey the generals and run a marathon in roses, a garden race
before the cafe is a cathedral,
where midnight starts a waltz, hints at more modern times
the times that hold bedroom eyes, every holiday, birthday, funeral, every beat, city, every kind of splendour
that sends our hearts running wild
the times that hold such strangeness and charm, fiction,
even pigeons, even demons
I wanted to cling to the bravado; be no one's girlfriend; in a coma for six weeks; see science and visions and multiplication like a movie script, ending
I wanted to decorate each plain verse, make the grey into pink, tessellate the shapes of its inherent hearts and knives

it was fall and you asked if like empty bottles, we float
if I would change my name to ingrid
if all our weekends could echo of pleasure sighs
I wanted to embrace the atlantic, climb to new heights,
come awake

but could a schoolboy help me do these things?
could he lay beside me in the snow and call it paradise?
would he make me stare into mirrors all night,
waiting by the phone? would he make me feel like I was nothing ordinary?

-c.j.