Another Man’s Girl

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& once again, he sits,

watching her wrench her hair of seaweeds, memory

and stale love.

 

Let go, he says, please.

Some wounds cut too deep, she says.

A wound’s worth of warmth, he says, is all I wanted to be, he says.

 

Far away, the brick kiln chimney

spits incessant smoke into the night,

smearing darkness with flame, the way she fills

his heart and taints the shoulder with spit

 

one more time.

 

Porn, shag, wash – the ritual that is supposed to cleanse the body

of loneliness.

 

My heart is a bomb crater, she says.

Let us settle into the night like silence, he says, and

spill into the morning like birdsong.

 

Teach me how do you do poetry, she says, while

I make a mausoleum of memories and break it

with a sledge hammer someday.

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& once again, we wear new masks

and tell old stories to each other.

A thin ribbon of a road to her house. Evenings

swallow us and so we sit in the stomach

of uncertain dusk. We eat together, watch Netflix,

the hole in my chest throbbing to leap, and swallow

a vacuum that can’t be named.

 

The papery wings of a moth

gone too close to the flame.

 

11:45 PM: I think I should leave, he says.

But I still have a stomach full of memories, she says.

 

A midnight snack. The sound of chewing. Silently

he puts on his shoes.

 

We should read Prufrock sometime, he says, it is about a man

who can’t profess his love.

At times, I feel, I have no memory, she says.

 

It is a good thing, he says.

 

Outside, the chimney works overtime,

feeding the night a hazy narrative of the moon.

 

Stay, she says.

 

I was a wound’s worth of warmth, he says, but now it

Has begun to heal.

 

This is how I shall set myself free.

■          ■