I was looking for a friend—
someone who would mend the broken glasses of my loneliness,
who would take every memory rising in my cough
and wash it in their own tears before giving it back.
When the city's drains swell with sadness,
they would walk beside me, silent as dead fish,
and from every syllable of my breath
gather the flowers of tuberculosis as they fall.
They would come at night, quiet as a thief,
steal all the false loves buried in my chest,
and leave in their place a small piece of sunlight—
so I could believe that even in police custody,
roses still bloom.
They would take me again and again to the wrong stations,
push me onto the wrong trains every time,
yet each time we arrived, I would find—
they had kept every lost path of mine safe in their pocket.
And when they walk into the church,
hanging my sins on the cross like old clothes,
I would shout—not the priest, but me—
This is my friend, my impossible scoundrel,
who carries all my grief on their own shoulders
and turns me into a bird, flying me away
to a place where no disarmament conference
will ever be needed again.