you say you've another
city caught between your teeth, one resembling a
gale or a tempest, Aiolos' sackful of illicit, imperfect
wind.
the bones, dead, are always buildings though the
clench of jaw is more metaphoric: a chomp down each
alleyway, scouring the gutters, retrieving the scattered
pieces of your self: some blood, a mitten,
a scrap of thigh. though where are these boys
now? you've written their names in black and green
marker, laminated the list and filed it away so
that you will not forget the anonymity of touch.
you do not think
of your behavior as stereotypical, as dirt upon
dirt. you do not see the world in terms of theories
or misogynies. you merely open the bag up to the
despot city in its parched entirety: the rats,
the tramps, the wistful vagabonds who travel
between or push through blusters along the main
street until the urge comes, making sticky the
pee-stained floors of public johns?
if i'd left my own skin behind (wind aside),
trapped and made transparent by the harsh shine
of light across cracked tile, upon returning to
retrieve it whose would i find lying there, coiled
and
ravaged, instead? how much of your own self have
you left behind in these peeling, transient stalls?
how much of your self have you lost unwillingly
to the city? how much wind have you let loose? |
