arc and return

Your legs remain the same, mouth open more edges, things change and stay. Sinking felt between third and fourth ribs. Your hand on the chain of my swing. Later, pushed back on the mattress. You ring as sound, you shunt under sheet, air on sweat, gasps and puddle, your legs itch where they bit you, our mouths keeping busy, an imitation of before, lime leaves on the kitchen counter, wet with wringing, we run water, salt, rung breath, run amok, flung stone on stones, a question of bad timing and falling in the blanks. Details flood back. You look for your shorts, your shirt.

bare

we are delirious and we can taste it.

save

The birds along the lagoon, muttering to themselves, there’s only so much sleep to go around now. Down by the beach, the bare throats and broad shoulders of lifeguards, knowing we drown more often than we think. When the last great expectations fall, run faster little hiccup. Smile wider. Sometimes you have to hand it to them or they’ll take it.

begin

Spend the morning putting cracks in the plates, chipping the glasses, rubbing the fabric raw. Might as well get everything started.

Rue the Day

We are bored and scared. We have plans.

Funny as another word for sad

Funny how you popped up when the breath got knocked out of me.

Caducous

This is the way. You don’t see it coming. A stitch in the ribs, breathe caught. The window wide, the trees delirious, lime juice burning bottom lip. Details want to say they told you so. A pebble on the carpet. That wall’s blank again. The woman next door cooks with rosemary, smells like something she can’t say. Ribs stitched, things bleached by sleep. Even the cranes mute, waiting, knowing now what shunts past on its way to the bay. Scavengers all along the tide line. Nothing lost, really. Me, I sleep with nettles, with thorns. Wake with a forgers map of scratches, fumble in mirrors and make up some story about where to go. The wasp thumps against the windowpane.

Outside

Slow fire descending this morning, the trees tenuous. It’s late, it’s early. We are our tenses. I intended this to be simpler. Sepia stains your mouth. How you’d lay down, taut as shadow, on my back. Everything we do can be summed up in our hands. This is the hotel where universes are born from such slowness. No need to worry. When Freud writes death just think bottom line. Swoon just when you realize you’ve forgotten how. Yes, that’s the door. All our lives in this moment, the distance, the skin warm silence, planes and cars, hellos and other rehearsed lines just outside. The wrongings and the rightings, it was never meant to be, it was just as it was, was hardly at all. Outside people line up, but for this moment we are close, not looking.

Lounge

Another city, one spread light paint night. Lost in the lights of the lounge, giving up gravity for smaller pulls and pushes, wondering if I am anything more than the washroom sign now, stick man with the strong stance, but he’s a worse kisser than me. There are only a handful of moves, and this is the one I am doing now.

Clear words fall muddy trying to be real things. Down in the lobby women practice phrases against the walls like tennis balls like they’re girls once more. You won’t come this way again. I found a torn piece of your shirt in the gate, the blue one you threw out but I kept. Now we are just signs. Warnings and directions. I look at your mouth, your bottom lip, and wait for the waitress to bring sense.