Alone at the cheapside, waiting
for my half-friends to play bar
trivia, drink down a salt sea
of margaritas. The wind rises,
steals squared napkins who
become brief black gulls.
I watch them fall to knots
by my hands. I think then
of the quiet museum lover
who preferred hands over
anything else. Easier to stay
separate, easier to control.
It drove me half-mad,
like the night she picked a fight
with two strangers on the walk
home from market. I was livid
but kept silent, our mutual anger
boiling over into *** as usual,
her hands furious and purposed,
as if that night stood in
for all the nights; as if she might
pry me loose and keep me near,
a particularly nice bedside trinket.
That was years gone now.
The crass tequila drags me back:
the evening rides a sorrel mare,
tramples a flimsy, ramshackle sun
into the yesterdays where it belongs.