Somewhere there is a perfect city that does not collapse to rubble at every mention of your name. Far from our collective mothers; dusting the glass and silverware unplugging phones desperate for keeping you indoors locking a million cabinets without latches, for fear they'd spill out, color everything these earth tones into pastels. Is yearning proof, of anything? I have no shreds of this world left between my fingertips, no sand in the toes; no language left to be unspoken. We had no secret words, and we only spoke in those cities that were shatterproof, with no glass within reach of maternal dusting poles. When no one spoke a word I knew it made sense: Finally, our own secret culture would evolve illicitly, between your explanations of phone cards, train stops and taxi cabs and evenings spent in too small beds or shaking from railway travel, my arm twitching in the basement when we would fall asleep. Somewhere there is a perfect city where death is the darkness of lids over eyes when we touched our lips to one another, no different. I have tried to bury you, and I fail though I am muddy, coal stained snow falling on such a recent grave; burying you, though I am the wind that sends the papers flying across the tables, out the windows birth certificates, poetry, anything to validate you, on this Earth; and your mother sent running through the streets to catch them as you stand still, for far too long. I'm paralyzed from motion when you stare, I am suddenly over here and you over there. I envisioned you, so often, as my left arm falling asleep as I try to write, on a blank page. You think I haven't kept things. But I have: Your pen, out of ink, gray and black as your wardrobe. A lollipop, pink with a dinosaur; the first word we agreed on in our secret dictionary, though I never said. A gift of cherry red chapstick, on a long ride back from Ithaca, before the world collapsed from all your mothers dusting. Somewhere there is a perfect city where the girls with pigtails and jump ropes you don't have to point to, to convince me, that the church is closed and the people, all these holy people, are filling up the streets. Somewhere, we can sit comfortably and I can bear the weight of your patience over a cup of tea in the daytime, before driving to nowhere for nothing like I am so desperate to do. Somewhere, the phones are all on the hook, and the parents hear you and the tattoo came out perfect, and there was no Him, or Him, or Her to tell us who you loved and who I didn't. You think I haven't kept things, but I have. Samples of your hand writing. The postcards and photographs, the picture, still in my wallet. When the family is gathered around the table you are my left arm; I have a ghost for a limb. I try to bury you, and I fail though I have tried to leave you in peace after digging so many of your graves. Somewhere there is a perfect city where death is the darkness of lids over eyes when we touched our lips to one another, no different. -e. _______________________________________________ Five7Five mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/five7five
