That kid you make fun of with a mental disorder
Has all the maps laid out
Waiting to see how life plays out
You keep laughing
Because your life will be a comedy when people laugh and point at you when you make a mistake
And you turn around to see nobody stand up for you
Yeah, it's hilarious isn't it?
You never know
Stephen Hawking made the world listen
Some of the most gifted are the the most disadvantaged
Our greatest gifts are the words of support and refusal to make demeaning behavior

I
There is a 3% chance I'll find you here. But if in each pair of eyes I dip, I find 1/8 of you; I'll be there soon.

II
I didn't crawl here; I took a plane. I spent six hours tracing the Atlantic from my window and you rose from the sea, dry and unsalted, twice each nautical mile. I would say it was my imagination, or the California wine, but I wear glasses now and never lie about what I see. It was you. And you and you and you.


III
Stealing is easier here. Maybe it's the crowds or the way the men smile at me like I'm harmless, but my hands move without question. They don't fumble or miss pockets, my heartbeat doesn't even protest. In prayer beads, silkworm cocoons, oils and sea rings, I am in debt to a city who doesn't know it.


IV
I have no ethnicity. Deep in bone coils the apathy and flight of someone's non-heritage. But I am forgiven; in a world of paranoia, brown eyes are always trusted and the way my hair falls reminds them that I'm on their side. Even my name curls within itself, folded flat and dead before it's over. It's better this way; no allegiance, no responsibility.

V
From a curb in district nine, I see your star. It's hanging where you said it would be but I can't see god in it the way you promised.

VI
On the other side of the world you told me about patch of green. You waxed flowers of every color, the sky I've only ever painted and the people, beautiful and dark, who will save me. I found it. In broken French and broken sandals I found it and the sun was setting and you had just left. So now we both know you won't be the one to save me.

VII
With one foot in the slanting gutter I walk until the city circles and I'm back where I started. In a daydream I found you. I smiled and quoted your book, the part that said 'When we heard the guidance, we believed in it' and you looked at me in a way that scared me. A way that translated your face into thousands of alphabets, ancient and invented. And I knew none of them. Suddenly I'm illiterate to you. Suddenly I'm gone.

VIII
I'm with a man who's made of smoke and each strawberry ring that escapes my lips is dedicated to someone that I’ve laughed with.

IX
With the intensity of archives on fire, I withdraw. You are still a body; a few hundred bones calcified and aging, a mind of words streaming like spider webs, blood you never shed, and  muscles that cross in blinding precision, but you are not who you used to be. You bound to me in a way that's irreversible and now we're both stitching. Awkward and broken we pull at flesh to remove each other. We have scars now, like stickers ripped from wallpaper. The outline of a palm stains my shoulder, a thumb the size of yours in the crook of my elbow. Small, white fingerprints tattoo your neck.


X**
I might be free. Over cobble stones with broken sandals I don't trip until I realize that a city where I loved is now part of me. I can get as far away from her as the modern map allows but the red and gold bangles that crowd my wrists are not to be taken off. They're a part of me too. Like blood spilled on a cobble stone, you will walk over us every day of your life.

Let's go on an adventure called life,
you can hold the map
and I the steering wheel.

We can go where horizons
have no ends.

it’s inevitable
we are two waves crashing upon one another from diverse directions
6 feet overpowering a near five
an abundance of sand collected in her toes, painted sunset in season
salt in the crevices of his cracked lips
                       he hasn’t drank since March
wildflowers on her dress and holes in his shoes

it’s faulty
we are racing towards riverbanks: barefoot, unsteady, and homely
this doesn’t feel like home
he’s a moonlit tower, prewar stairwells, and a bright white nail bed
she secretes meteors in her pockets and a jackknife
slopes and curves and hills to stumble
words and doorknobs and photographs to wonder

it’s vexed
we headline in bold faced Georgia
friends concerned themselves with each petty fight
        oh, boy did we
fight until her tongue wore out
his palms scratched to be healed by hers
her mother was on board, she guessed; his mother said yes

it’s bereft
we’re naked on the South lawn
a rose brush picked, prodded, called to question
her hazel eyes lack the ability to cry and cry and cry
his voice, stripped of rage
politics behind the scene
a young widow’s desperation for peace

it’s mass-produced
we’re political maps facing the chalkboard
colored crayons and heel-high socks
pepperoni’s dot her pizza the way she dots her i’s
                       as she writes lyrics of you
he raids the kitchen for her, prying the fridge for her
glinting sparkles in artificial light

it's submitted
we’re chipped steel bracelets
her straw bends forward at a crease
they didn’t realize what factors meant
                                     his version too close to candor
yielded, the missing L on a paper sign
a stranded guitar pick balancing atop city grates and a below ground maze

it’s whatever it may be
and may be whatever it’s
but she and he and I and you
we perch on seven lines of fact
like birds we wallow, and trees we droop
‘til the ending sunrise
where you figure the truth

She's all Spring and Summer
                Strength
         and words of shelter
He's all maps and formlines
                    waits
        in wings for Springtime

Take these tattered ghosts
                    from their trenches
ink-smeared, tethered tight
                      to the depth curve
Autumn only waits for the silent
                       ones sometimes.

"If their voices chase
                   out the brisk months,
quiet those windy wights
                     with a new song.
Autumn only waits for the silent
                      ones," she said.

In 3/4 time
the distances unwind
so swiftly
Afterburn of quiet nights
                      glows, fading.

He's all sovereign anger,
               righteous, stiff
                      but twisting
She's all cavalier, now--
               cat-quick through
                   projections

Past the legends,
               rose our directions
Keyed to Winter's
                 dumb introversions
Years just spilling over the levee's
                         prescribed edge.

With their weathered ghosts
                           in the trenches,
tired-eyed, tethered tight
                          to the map's edge
Autumn only cares for the silent
                             ones some days.