Glass

He says he only loves glass boys, but I can tell he doesn't know how to put them to good purpose. Later, I will show him everything I know about aquariums.

A new apartment

The furniture wanders the living room, confused, lost. It's a new apartment. Years, even centuries after the fire, the one that came to take the apartment away the morning after we wondered if it was the only thing keeping us together.

Now we have another one. All day the wet paint sings to the lost furniture. Tonight, the blinds are open to the thin stars, the last unpainted wall, your sleeping back to me in the middle of the wide bed. The paint in the bucket is mumbling now a lullabye, sometimes another sort of goodbye.

leaves, part two

It’s all about escaping gravity, the lonely sound of horse chestnuts falling pinball through the tree branches. All around, our deciduous friends blushing, falling, to pieces again. Everyone has a bottom line and even the evergreens wonder about boredom while they urge themselves to root deeper. Thinking about how ‘pandemonium’ sounds happier than it should.

The apartment in the building across the way is suddenly vacant, the chandelier lost in the open space, beleaguered. You see, art is what’s left when he’s gone. He needs to go more. But instead it’s an itchy afternoon. It’s all about gravity. There must be some reluctant astronaut orbiting somewhere who would admit that sometimes it’s not worth the effort.

synapses

Always this charged air between us, the discovery of atom and dust mote synapses. We were delegates from different species sent to get along. You plant what you fear, stand taller to fall. Such a long and complicated grief. The rusty buckets, broken panes, long after the winter washed through, then spring summer the confusion or lack of affection for time. The sunset bewildered, at sea, light long after it’s dark, like someone forgot to turn out the lights in one piece of sky. These are our last slow waltzes, the last steps through the leaves. Already they sleep in, curl up, lose faith, but we can’t blame them.

Leaves

Late afternoon, Sunday, the growls of the seaplanes coming and going in Coal Harbour.

“You almost have a view now the leaves are falling,” he says, and then sips a glass of water.

“The leaves were the view,” I say, not looking up from the book I am reading.

It’s not a metaphysical debate. He’s just not been here long enough to miss the leaves when they fall.

distraction

a guy carrying a whale bone or something else that looks clavicle; can you see him later, flung wide across this inlet bed, no way back from certain verbs, pile another boy on the law of diminishing returns but the deeper you get all the limbs akimble and looking for posture, I used to know how this sentence ended but now I rely on . . . all breath has three beats, surfaces slipping, what he'll wash away later and what he'll tell his friends, bed made with brevity and pressure, the weight of me, how I'd planned what came next, even though I never did though there's a pose for heroes and fish now that I think about it, tighten the rope before it gets away on you, whatever it is, the slow dirtying of laundry, feet making their minds up to smell, places on me untouching the touch of you, we're never noble until it's almost too late, where the broken ones pick up the pieces and then put them down again, better to look out of frame, swear up and down you've done this before, look distracted.

Another City

The sky barely tilting, certainly not falling. Swallowing the day for more blue, light bouncing down Fan Tan Alley and the wicker baskets adjusting their weave to get comfortable. Panes of windows stretch cat like and hungry for the sun, this Saturday spread wide and wandering, lost in a familiar city.

The syncopation of streets like phone lines strung between posts, the gaps like I never lived here before. The shopkeepers can tell I am lost, the way I trip on steps, stumble here and there. Things are like this sometimes despite the determinedness of hands, the rocks we overturn, the sideways smiles we give. You'll have to forgive me, the unreachable, the other half of my words falling away, they're just shapes now.

Thursday Night, Flamenco

She’s pulled to her feet like she’s already lost this tug of war. All the windows in the café are open wide. Faces in passing cars watch her, ghostly, can see her, see her with her arms above her head, her face thrown back.

The old man singing doesn’t know he’s old. He sings like he did when he was 21. It’s all he can do. All he can do not to think about later and the empty chairs. Not even a forgotten purse to ask him what the words mean and who he is singing for. Who was he singing for?

On the sidewalk outside a man in a white tank top and the sediment of tattoos pretends she is not dancing. He doesn’t know her. He never will. He looks like he might stare down the traffic. He doesn’t stand a chance, but I am rooting for him.

This story is about what they can’t see. How two tables away, her hands ignore her face as they unfold origami the closed mouths of birds, her arms all slender throat. They turn to see one another, then turn away. Look then look away. Equal parts want and beleaguer.

You call, my phone rings, so I take it out to the street. It’s a poor connection, the kind where after every word I say I can hear my voice repeating it back to me, an echo. It’s impossible to love this way.