1 with the sun coming against brick buildings and slabs of grass, wrapping our legs around the city. around all our absences, our missing crickets and chances and keys. around all the old books curling the curb with abandoned words. lovers drinking paper teacups in windows, lined up in cobbley rows, talk about being waist-deep in water, walking against the river, a harvest of lilypads in the bathtub. everybody rubbing dreams, crusted from the corners of our eyes. our collection of pigeons and crows. all the quiet sharks of our imaginations hungry, circling, weightless, searching for the ocean.
2 all my important papers are shifting between boxes or mouths. i'm signing my name in the back of a red tinted book with a leg on the cover. the leg on the cover does not look like my leg. my leg is muscled and soft with a thin felt of hair. i am a mammal and the book doesn't reflect that. heart like a hummingbird the book doesn't reflect that. my feet like freight-train hobos the book doesn't reflect that. make-shift whimsical tinted my underwater blues and greens the book doesn't reflect that. this, my salty yellow breeze in the window tickling the houseplants. the purple bruises and sandbox bags of sad hidden under the bed. the faded black letters of the streetsigns that keep me. the world atlas blown open in the gutter with its rain-pages, torn-out continents, curious pink countries, the book doesn't reflect that.
i am stuffing my hand-drawn map of the city in my mouth for people to make sense of what i say. my legs are stronger than everybody's, i wrap them around the skyline and tilt it to my liking. my feet are sneaky. second-hand knee-high spy-socks, hiding under my pants. the dreamtime compass built in to sneakers, my heart. my fingers that reach under the table, not over, trying to touch. the book doesn't reflect that.
3 "dear san francisco, warm up. your pigeons' lavender talons are stuck to the wires. i am looking for a rotary phone, i am looking to time-travel. i want to dip my body down into the seaside renaissance of your concrete belly. love ali. your fog is building pictures of pelicans in my hair. your faulty edges snapping off like cypress, or like eucalyptus skins peel away in winter strips. dear san francisco. tumble our corners down, surrender us in your crumble, tip us into the sea."
4 if it was watermelon sugar that would be a good thing. being alive living in an apple tree makes me tired. i started sprinkling cinnamon on everything. i am only thirty percent better than i was before. parts of me are worse. one part of me wants to find an avalanche to build a snow-cave in. one part of me wants to sit in a shallow tidepool sifting the sand for starfish. one part wants to put myself on witch-trial and find out what the november village really thinks of my slapdash ways. part of me misses the mountains, surrounding, sharp-capped with circling snowbirds and ice. the same part misses rivers, clumping sneakered feet from one rock to the next, the mud of being born into flower, the balance on fallen logs left for crossing. that part of me muggy, doe-nibbled, vegetable garden, fireflies to float my irises. that part grounded, a blanket of pumpkin-colored leaves falling. all parts of me are swollen with longing, this i build my self on the inside of. all parts of me for cycles, to be better; loneliness, to be worse. all parts in disagreement. all parts rusted, oiled, standby, sugar, chugging that old sour heart along. the path home will be lined with wild strawberries, no bigger than a thimble. if you look closely. if it rains and the birds and you listen
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