The
          sometimes
          tremulous
glimpses of surprise,
I think
     what a book it would make.

I hear the late afternoon cheer
         the honest type
somewhere                                                          
                  lurking behind
                                old Sixth Avenue Road.
I suppose
it is not just a phenomenon of nature that goes instinctively on,
not the appalling detail of any large human scheme, eroded by schedules
But I accept it as one of the miracles.
(Which I never see anywhere else)

can you hold it in your palm? I can't stop talking about hands.
I don't remember the last time any other body part was that important but the one that slept next to you out of necessity instead of loneliness.
There's a problem, like a rock skipping into my neighbor's pool but it's not my neighborhood and none of the houses remind me of home. A solitary moment shrinking in shrubs when you know that the cars are passing by and you have no idea what direction anyone's going. Where's the destination and will they get there like you?
Muddy lawns and soaking sidewalks is everywhere you've ever been but you don't talk much about that anymore. Some kind of selective mutism that gripped you when you were too young to make decisions, just a bad joke played well on yourself. Drifting from window to window to see if my fingerprints stay there, if the future will break down the door and trip me with shoelaces that were worn by me or my best friend or by nobody and I think I'll understand then the most significant rule, you can't be in two places at once.

a girl sits on the pavement,
lunch in hand
wondering what kind of times they were
-neither the best nor the worst of times,
but times spent at a coffee shop
watching the cars go by.

as the rain falls
-as it always falls at 2 am,
steady and calming
a world in limbo
despite all of the chaos that i so lovingly
call mine.

the birds aren’t out yet,
but the cars softly flash their lights
i shouldn’t be here
this desolate city,
mine,
this desolate life,
mine.

the plants sway softly,
ever their vibrant green and your cat meows
-the only thing along with your short hair
and scrolling habits
and off-feelings
you’ve been able to keep alive this winter.

lone figures in the winter,
at your desks -alone in class
smiling at a laptop,
the papers on your bedroom floor flutter around you
wind in my rooms,
slashes on the push floor.

slashes -also on the peaches
nectarines
fingertips (from falls)
coffee cups in empty cafes
and unthinkably
blueberries.

all of our photographs,
a poet said they would happen,
waiting to happen,
i think they’re right and
they’ll never happen
-it’s the kind of beauty arranged and taken down,
never enjoyed.

you told me i was gentle
a reed in a world of sharp swords
malleable and wavering
breakable

you told me i was vulnerable
a grain of sand
pulled along with the stream
unable to swim against the current
for fear of making waves

you told me i was sensitive
a petal in the clammy palm of a child
who could not resist the temptation
of pulling apart a flower
so delicate and sweet

this was my weakness
my weak-ness

i became a sword
cold and unfeeling  
wielded by an
unbreakable insecurity

i became the moon
bending the tide to my will
uprooting the silt
upon which it sits

i became a wasp
a parasite
feeding from flowers
that so naively welcomed me in

or so i supposed
i suppose

i endured them
the swords my mother warned me against
the currents that drag  
down down down
the wasps that hunt and hurt
with their poisonous sting

and with dismay
and with relief
i was gentle