a watch.

But, of course, as

we talk it

gets bigger, it

elaborates.

It crawls up

arms, down

our thighs, like it

needs to keep

moving, growing

to outpace

what it replaces.

I say the neck is

off-limits. Finally

we have to admit

there’s only

one way this

will end. What if

I get a tattoo

of her face

on my face,

is that

enough? We drive

in silence

for a mile, before

I realize that

is exactly

what a face is.

Via

Via

In Paris

of men in red

trousers,

women with dogs.

I follow you

through their maze.

It was cool for July,

the lavender

blossoms, dusty

slap of the streets,

motorcycles, and

cigarette smoke.

Then there was

the Seine,

ancient, night with

the dignity of an un-

attended funeral.

One limestone pebble

at a time given and

never received,

the river knows everything

is taken in the end.

I lost you at the bridge,

behind Pont Marie,

twilight’s night trick,

that moment a

river is a road, a path,

eternal brightness.

Repeat

Repeat

I tell it so many times

on 10th Street, over lunch

in a bar, to tender eyes,

it begins to sound

like a piece of news —

but once I decide

I’ll tell it how

it happened —

how she starved to death,

mumbled her pain,

clung, shat, moaned,

how I was too frightened

to sit with her

through the night

so she wouldn’t die alone.

Blackout

Blackout

I’d been to the building

in ’96, the upper floors un-

finished, balconies perched on

air, a new gouge at the sky below

Houston, the only rooftop with-

out a water tower. Brick by brick

it claimed the neighborhood from

mean streets, its lobby swirled

with mirrors and gold, its pools

of senseless water, Albanian

doormen with tattooed wrists

who came to this city with

sacks of their dead mothers’ jewels

and lethal skills to make it safe for

us. We moved in four years later,

arriving to a white box without

furniture.

Year by year, as the cafés closed

and reopened, and bodegas

shut and stayed shut, it became

a home. Here is where I learned

to paint a wall. Here is where

I discovered garlic, and poetry again,

where she held my hand when

I got the worst news, and where

we began our night walks and

had dinner and I proposed and

she said yes and we went away,

and where we returned, and it

was home, because a home is

where you return to.

And month by month as we fell out

of love, a tomb we returned to at night,

the lid drawn shut, the night

heaved, and the lives we

both lived on pause.

How much we loved each other!

We couldn’t turn over in the dark to see

we were decreating something greater

the longer we waited. The lights

outside showed her face in sleep,

I should have known. Her leg gave out first.