Rain

British Airways lost my luggage and it's been raining in Paris for two days now. It's easy sometimes to think that the rain is only falling on me. But today I saw all of the Parisians under their umbrellas and remembered again that this isn't some kind of punishment. I haven't done anything wrong. Sometimes it just rains. Sometimes the ground is just thirsty.

Cheeks

I feel miserable on the El platform. The reflection of everyone's legs in the rain water looks like you, like you are hiding under the tracks from me, like you are pacing the sidewalks. Last night I dreamed that I lived through my own execution, and today a man told me that it meant I had a new beginning, that what we thought had died had only been resting. I told him how sick I felt after the jolts. He read my palm with his swollen fingers, and told me that there was a rebirth. I don't know what there was. I just know that there's been something missing from me for days now. I am a few fingers short, a heartbeat, an eyelid. And I just know that I am so sick of space. I am so tired of walls. Of galaxies. Of fields. Of trains. Of planes. Of motorcycles. I want to be closer to everyone, sandwiched between them if possible. I don't want inches between us, or centimeters. I want to be wrapped around your thumb like a thimble. I want to put my fingers between your bracelets and your wrists. I am tired of the radius, of the spotlight circle that surrounds us, of the maps that count the miles. I feel blank. Maybe it's because my wallet's gone, maybe I have nothing to define myself with. Maybe it's because since you left my eyes have nothing bouncing back on them. I don't know. I feel restless. It's just that the world feels grim since then. Since everyone left every day feels like a ride in a cab with tinted windows, and the world feels like a Happy Birthday balloon, popping. The foil kind that starts to sag after 3 days tied to a flower vase. I feel like I can see that the end is near, that time is plummeting, that the universe's cheeks are beginning to sag with its age. I feel like I can see its jowls forming and its eyes folding. That man must have been right, there's a rebirth of some kind. There's something happening. Whatever it is I hope it brings me closer. I want to be suctioned to you like a straw. There is so much that I want to know, so much I want to explore. But every time I hit a wall. There is something concrete I can't break through. I hit a field of sunflowers that I can't see over. I hit oceans and moats. And I just want to mow over all the weeds between us. I don't want fabric or air between us. I just want you close to me, as close as you can be to me.

fireworks

i think a lot about the night
we kissed like vacuums might / or magnets
stacked like old books on your mattress,
hardcover poems of ancient lovers and dust.

you sucked on my lips like they were
fences we were jumping over
immigrants crossing borders
& hoarding the time we lost in boxes.

i wanted to touch you / between tics & tocs,
smother you like green chili
on your sides (your hands like fly traps on mine)
& feel the warmth of you,
your fireworks / your forest fire.

i tried to fill the space between us with that smoke,
with skin & with bones,
with a string that stretched across our eyes,
like tin can telephones
tugging at mine.