There's **** on the floor of the Blue Line.
It's one in the afternoon,
Tuesday.

This is the poetry
I don't like writing.

About the Fight Club anarchism
without the sense of purpose.

I watch a man cry
over a woman's leftover Chipotle.

Eight feet away:
the passage of pills between palms.
I don't know the contents
any better than they do.

I keep my blind eye
and loose change.

I keep my middle class pride
safe for another day.

Do you hear it?
The hiraeth
Here it lies
City lights
The shining bokeh behind your eyes

Can you hear it?
The hiraeth
Here it lies
The rustling leaves
Of Franklin’s oak trees

Will you hear it?
The hiraeth
Here it lies
The snow knee deep
Childhood friendships we shall keep

Can you hear it?
The hiraeth
Here it lies
The ducks of bronze and feather
Make memories of hometown brighter

it's weird meeting with people
who actually loved you
after months have passed
this love that once strived to be permanent
like conquering mountains
but i shed it like snakeskin
forever is way too hard
when you're too selfish to love people back
always chose myself
did you know your feelings
were the greatest gift i've ever known?

i thought if i arrived here early
and gave you no set time
i would have a bit of the morning to myself
but you were already around the corner
i knew you would be
i know you well, too

i didn't let us go deep this rainy morning
we should only go forward from here
not backwards
we talk
hell, we live in small talk
i say i thrive in summer
you talk about the snow
not much has changed
and somehow weather preferences
felt like the biggest incompatibility then
the most mundane of compromises

didn't run to my own defenses
or fall to your knees apologizing
didn't tell you if i pray or who i've slept with
or that i spent the last three days
crying on the jumpseat
we talk about the coffee shop
i just came here to create a new memory
stub out everything that was
like a stale cigarette
see? i haven't changed that much

instead i say i'm tired of sitting in the back of the plane
as people probe and poke my sides like an insect
asking for coffee with five packets of splenda
i say new york is a drag most days
i am lonely
i wonder if i'm pregnant
it's the only reason i stopped binge drinking
i woke up and wasn't hungover
thank god
i wouldn't admit that i miss the noise
of dry heaving over a toilet bowl

you didn't pay for my coffee
or pour your soul out
or drive me home
you say you leave today
you don't even say you came here for me
because you are just as free to be
so i nod and begin putting my headphones on
before even saying goodbye
i leave the conversation abruptly
ending on a note about
how many cape verdeans
live in boston
i grab my bouquet of sunflowers
slip away into the brooklyn fog
i was gone before you knew it
all the effort you put to be here
with me today
for me to walk out the door
reminiscent of what i did to you then
on a smaller scale

you say "until next time"
but you know i'll slip through the cracks
like i do
predictable me
and even when you find me
i'll be on the run

I used to love
When you and I
Got too drunk to speak
And watched the stars
From my bathroom sink
In well-lit Boston
Because
Imagination is important
In times like these.

Today, we marched, or rather, I watched him,
my friend, next to me dream. Of what futures, I'm not
quite aware. Some orange man has overtook
the american government everyone in their right mind
and heart
cried,
and a square in Boston was filled with lively
dreamers
with placards and gleaming eyes and faces
that said no! not again! A few toddlers
sauntered around the feet of their parents
saying and shouting and muttering and playing
with words and slogans they don't understand
yet in their minds,
maybe their hearts,
in them they know. Next to me my friend grabbed
an abandoned placard and I felt lost. I only
came to watch how the words of the orange man
came alight. I was afraid we would catch flame.
A grey-haired woman had earlier skipped across
the crowd in front of us to show us a different route and
told us useful things- we were fresh I had explained-
and we carefully avoided police but there weren't many.
It was cold. Not the orange man. Somehow we
met my friend's friends and we started a chant
in the crowd below us, perched atop a crumbling
history of a church. Pictures were taken. Instagram.
We dabbed to the beat of Hindu chanting and tambourines.
Muslims prayed towards Mecca beneath Christian statues.
Amazed. I felt a certain emptiness.
Then my friend joked,
'I'll make a social justice warrior out of you too!'
Why am I not angry? The orange man is wrong.
A fool, a jester. Yet our testicles are in his hands.
Sometimes, rarely, I feel a meager sad frightening pressure
between my legs. Some have already been castrated
in confused airports. Accidents of birth have left them
stranded in a great barren womb of this world. What
is a state? A foreign policy? Man? Woman? Child?
How much time do I have left to ***? On whose
face can I do it on? Is the orange man aiming for
mine? Ours? The veiled woman? Is the immigration
counter camera pornographic? What awkward things
to do with one's time. One's body. One's mind.
One's heart.
I am ashamed.
Instead of working, I am thinking. I am lazy.
I spend scholarship money in restaurants
away from the college dining hall so that the noise
around me will be something I cannot recognize.
Still both are the same bubbles of safety. Different
stages of cocooning is all. I am a caterpillar surrounded
by butterflies eating steak and salmon. I am ugly. So ugly.
Nothing beautiful at all.

It feels like my eyes have just been opened
In this beautiful city, I am amazed
My old life seems to melt away and fly through the air above
The city with more history than us keeps me moving
I see your face in the harbor as a boat slowly passes by
Will I ever truly be free from this mental trap?
But tonight as I sit in the airport and watch people run by followed by a plan taking off
I realized something
We were always on different planes
Coming and going
Loving and hating
I feel free and and ready
Ready for what ever life is going to throw at me next

You know this is all yours,
I mean,
Who else
Could it possibly be for?