Bite

In the market at the bottom of the hill, a pile of eggplants glare as certain as Tuesday. It’s difficult not to bite them, the way I can’t stop myself from biting your bare shoulder when it comes anywhere near my mouth. It is an arrogant shoulder. As arrogant as egg plants stacked high, trying to deny they are waiting.

Thrum

Days until we will see each other again. The body a series of maps and uncertainties like a broken egg in the palm. Things go as planned when you’re looking for your bottom line. You’ve got longing in the corner of your mouth. A man near a long line of trees points it out to you, but you look away. You’ve been trying not to touch your face.

The sky is in love again. You sit on the station steps; sweat trickles down the nape of your neck down the long valley of your spine. I know how this ends, but I am not there to tell anyone. The children on the jetty sing a song about drowning. You translate it for the tourists. It makes the mothers nervous.

In the square yesterday, the one near the canal with the books and the costumed girls, we waited to say goodbye. The heat held its dirty hand to our mouths. Birds fell asleep in the trees and fell to the ground, the messy staccato sounds of ripe fruit smacking cobblestones.

Near the station, rows and rows of other peoples’ goodbyes:
the stretch to something we could have said given the sad light
the echoes of the room flung down on itself in case of emergency
the bottom lip bit
the look away looked away
the quiet blink
the mark on his cheek where he scratched himself while sleeping, rolling on the sea bottom with crustaceans and the other bitter ones.

The paths take themselves after a while. The sad vitriol of some loves and the happy faces of sandwiches, the street full of cars waiting, the light keepers and the sign posts all knowing better and not hesitating to tell you, and on and on. We have so little say in this.

Time Zones

Three hours difference. Too early, then, to tell you about the fog here off the lake, the dew glowering in the grass, and other words for sodden. We have been sending text messages but they arrive randomly and sometimes not at all. Now I only send notes if I don't care if they arrive. The air is crisp here. The wrong things are clear.

Later, I will know that there are sounds for this time: the shucking of peach from pit, crunch of apple flesh bit from apple flesh. You don't have to explain, I know. Things often go further than you'd expect. The stairs end in the dark, the last step often air. We want so little. We want so much.