I see you in the park.
I want to look at you.
You want to look at me.
Our eyes ricochet
off each other.
I can't catch you
looking at me.
I can’t even give
a smile to you.
You’re Alcatraz and
I’m swimming to your rocks
and when I get there
you'd rather stay in jail,
kissing the walls.

There is no you. There are a thousand yous.
I know no you. I see 30 yous an hour.
Where are you?
Are you out there?
You’ve got to stay away. You get too close
and you crumble,
or I crumble. Gravity sends
two lives shaking into screws, identities
unable to hold.

But I could know how fragile you are.
How you sit on an iron bench and open
your long, dark lens
to the ultraviolet April blooms.
Shamble into my arms.
I won’t laugh. I promise I won’t laugh.
I’ll break your fall.

It’s my mistake to think
that you’re fragile, that
you’re a flower.
You are a flower, but
flowers are only
advertisements
for the tree.
Flowers fall away early
leaving only the wide, armored waist.
It isn’t you that will crumble.
It’s only me.