141

And sometimes God leaves
a sleeping dog on your stoop

Sorry it got so cold out there-
just take him for a walk

He didn't notice the bombs that fell
even when no one wanted them to

140

We've sat politely in the living room
knees together, backs straight
staring at each other for thirty years or so

I watched your face drop
You watched my hair grow long
We've forgotten to wonder how old
the kids have grown

You finally got up for a glass of water
You'd never walked that way before
I didn't know you anymore

Not even when I turned my head
to see the half of the room
that you understand

139

I know that face well
Your mouth to the side
like when you were little
gripping your father's leg
drowning in a crowd of cocktail dresses

Bones cast shadows on your face
I don't remember your arms this thin
But the freckles are all the same
The cluster on your wrist

So tell me what you thought about
when you saw
the crack of light
in the afternoon

I forget sometimes that you were there
with me, next to puddles in the parking lot
when we finally got what we wanted
and didn't want it anymore.

138

You were never all that great, I guess
but you could put the bait on the hook,
and that was enough for me.

Oh, you don't change.
We just don't fish anymore.
When suddenly everyone could do something
and spoke about it at those work parties
to people who knew
they'd walk away soon to get a drink.

137

There was a drawer open
but I fell asleep anyway.
I didn't think I could do that

Now clothes stick out of the dresser,
and shoes guard the door,
but as long as it's all the same

Messy as my hair when I'm finally asleep.
I wonder how you look in the day

Let's skip to the part
when I haven't seen you in a while,
and we remember it all the same

136

The rest of the world I haven't seen
is not going to be enough
as long as the people
still walk in streets,
all the flat faces going by

I thought maybe we could all live
in the sky
wake up when the sun is gone
so we don't need to know
who's wrist we grabbed

I thought maybe I could live in the air
but when we got arrived, I'd already been up there

135

How average airplanes have become
They're not the first things
to fly, we say

Be lucky, be born
when nobody's looking
Then find your way out
of the woods, someday

134

I thought at least
if the sink wasn't fixed
it would be broken another way-
spurting out orange juice and plaster
on the floor
next to the skid marks
of yesterday's cry

I looked for you under mountains
of rocks
and I haven't moved an inch

133

Should I be disappointed
I was wrong about most of it
but I don't mind

Some of every even-timed hour
for half a life or so
gone to watching real words and tongues
dance around in space
and I don't mind

132

Our backs face each other
and our voices are the walls
the corners of our faces

And we both want to be the one
to leave straight from here to California
thinking only of the next
city on the map

131

I painted the birds and the skies and the trees
and somehow was left the same.

130

Set your lovers aside

If they care as much
as they said they would,
on the telephone where they were all alone
they'll stay home and make dinner on their own

Go to the dancers
from the street
You never spoke a word
They'll grab your hands
and be the ones you need
for them to be

129

And through the crowds
there are people who
I'm going to know longer than you

Yeah, in a year or two, maybe
you'll be in a country
I haven't seen
and you won't see me in
any of the houses from the plane

And I love how much
I want you to be up there
soon
getting the window seat you wanted
finding nothing in the speckled ground
that you're sad to leave behind

128

It's so easy to know you
How are you today?
Yeah, I could have done better
but your face doesn't change

When the sky moves over
and the houses fall down
and the people can't see
and the streets rearrange

You're not going to look for me
before the dark turns you
into a lawyer or a family
but you'll never get around
to buying a new keychain

127

What's worse than what you said
to me
is you haven't changed
since yesterday

in the diner
where we made fun of each others' sweaters
holding each others' troubles
in our pockets for a while

Or since years ago
when we drove
and your jokes
were even better than mine

126

Years must be different
when you're going somewhere

Well I was here the last time
it was now
and I was probably sitting
down
on this chair

My wrists a little thinner
Eyes a little further apart
The watermelon picture
not yet leaning behind the stove

And my plant grew better then
but I don't care to try again
Spring, roll into Saturday
and Tuesday into a brown paper bag

125

All the people who say
my dark blue luggage
lurking down the belt

all the people who checked it
for the ribbon or sticker they'd left
so that could pick it out

All the people who let it pass
with no reason to wonder
where it'll go

All the people who didn't know
it would stay open on my bedroom floor
on top of a candy wrapper
until the snow came and I decided to unpack

124

The at least
is we won't be this way forever.
Miss your train all you want-
the next one comes in five minutes.
You may spend it better here
watching the couple carrying bird cages
and holding hands in an unprofound love

Well isn't it exciting
to know that this happens every year
and buries beneath your fingernails
where you grow used to seeing them
every time you remember your hands

123

Hundreds of people
are here to see me.

I didn't do anything all that grand
Well you blend in just fine.

Come sit with me in my backyard
when everyone else is gone.

122

It's too hot to sleep upstairs
The walls sweat off their paint
and it hangs in the air

And the first floor is too cold
It finds any inch of uncovered skin
wraps around it, molds

And you know that it'll be that way
so you sit there in your car
glaring at the key in the ignition
waiting to be told

121

The people who go through their mail
when they get home
had no reason to wonder
whether I'd get on a train, only alone,
and get off in different lighting
with none of the people
who were there when I got on

And I didn't,
but I could have-
so maybe they're still wrong
when they tell me you're no good
because
of course you are

120

How do you stop when you don't want to
Yeah, they'll get you in the end
but who's looking

You'll be different by then-
it's someone else's problem

Should you stick your naked arm
into a beehive
The world stands in Times Square
and answers in unison

as the doctor lights a cigarette
and edges through the crowd
smirking at you when he gets out

he's been alone in a city too

119

I can't quite work it out-
which shirt you'll be wearing
Am I up to your eyes? To your nose?

And where we'll be
Has your voice changed at all?
And what it'll say

Because the letters didn't mention
whether you'd just gotten back
from the girl you met
in an ordinary way
or you'd just put on
a fresh pair of socks

118

Maybe one day with a cup of coffee
and a photo album on my lap
I'll say that I was too naive
to see that none of it really mattered

But I'll be wrong,
laughing at the girl
sprawled out on her bedroom floor
watching herself in the skylight

I'll pass stories around the table
to people who don't know me now
though it won't be funny then either

117

I'm lying as still as I can
on the rough carpet floor
but it's too hard to stop time
when the wind keeps coming
through the walls
throwing papers off their piles
scattering them around