You said you wanted to love me in sepia Before we'd even learned how to kiss in color Or how to crucify. The photo of us from a year later (snapped by a passing Angel) the one you keep in your wallet to pull out on special occasions - when the 1 train is empty … Continue reading filtered things

Thinking everybody knew about us and would throw shade if I ran to you across the plaza - got one of those cloudy voices that doesn't carry no matter how loud I shout- I walked three meters behind you for a minute . . .

You looked into my eyes for a reflection

Of the shimmering jade-silk-sewage-baked-seawater-tile-indigo

City at the edge of the earth . . .

It will be a long time before the House at Delmas 24 forgets your crow-child screech

and the imprint of your slender bones fades from the recollection of the cane chair in the front room . . .

It's all been done and said and felt before; what's left for you?
Your whole life has been spent moralising, considering, telling yourself why your instincts are wrong.
You've taken open mindedness to its extreme, pushed up the sliding pane so far the AC doesn't even matter anymore . . .

because I left for forty seconds

she folded up her blanket and went outside

into the company of others . . .

Waves aren't all she makes —

Sounds, too

Her smile unwrapping in the dark like secret tinfoil . . .

I could get used to the soft light and the red velvet parting

And the collection of my favorite things: books, colored cover, the idea of coffee.

Starting tomorrow I'll avoid doing the things at which I am mediocre . . .

When you drink citronnelle, you think of sunshine

of dust on your small feet

of washing them in the beautiful river where your father was born and buried . . .

I think I would have let you wear my favorite sweater — the soft one with sea green blossoms on the front — though sometimes I wonder whether we would have even had separate wardrobes, growing up. We might have . . .