Every single time I think of you
it is never directly of you.

It always is the red potatoes
sprinkled with rosemary.

It is lit cigarettes on fire escapes.

it is record players,
and scrabble matches.

It is the look on the cab driver's face
as I forced you in his cab
when you got too drunk
on the fourth of july.

It is the ride back home,
over the Brooklyn Bridge.

It is Fireworks exploding
into chandeliers of light,
in the distance,
as you're passed out,
and I'm crying
because I miss my mother.

there was a couple on the 1train
and every second there was a pda. my
pupils grew threefold for the opposite reason
theirs did. her boyfriend left at 225th, and i
couldn’t help but look at how miserable she was.
her once butterflies now struggled to fly underground
and fell off the platform near columbia. they lost their wings
the same way i lost love back in the hot month of june.
she became a normal human whereas fourteen stops ago
her teeth were snow and his face was an avalanche and
their lips had a conversation that their
eyes weren’t paying attention to. she closed her eyelids
and i could imagine that her imagination was him holding
her hand; running his thumb through her palm, trying
to predict a future with him in it. they were lost in each others
glasses and they were blind to everything but
their silhouettes. he took a piece of her soul when he left,
i pray he returns it back.

Lean out and contemplate the Empire State.
After all, there's nothing else left to you.
The spider-web paths of the city
Branch out too often to form the whole
picture in your head more than a few
stems out.

Where do your lost hours go?
Is there a heaven for the good ones?
The ones you spend reading Harry Potter
in Spanish?
As if it's really so much better than reading
trash like 1Q84 or Plato's Republic
for 1200 page-intervals of excess language or
A bunch of questionable assertions
backing up logical conclusions on the most essential questions,
Respectively.

When I sit with the bright light in my eyes,
it triggers the breakdown of melatonin molecules in
my blood,
Among other things.
Will this restore my Brooklyn Majesty
in swells of lightwave tides
Or will it lack the broad spectrum necessary
to push my half-developed form out of the tidal pool
to make a swim amongst
frail men in shark suits?