eulogy for downtown dreams

i.

there isn’t enough air in the room, dear,

                           or it’s that the music is too loud,

                               or the glass on the floor is accidental.

so tell me again the dream you had where

we spilt the stars sideways into the carpet

and we were eating oranges,

                                       licking the sweetness off our thumbs

and i said, “kiss me,”

                                           and you did.

ii.

i will probably leave things out

of this poem.

like how the back of your hand balanced the veins

          of an autumn leaf, dripping translucent, chestnut in the sunset,

how your voice dropped to a wisp on the sea breeze,

catching harmonies like flies but spitting them out unchewed

                                       and carried away in an instant.

like how we pressed veins and cathedrals alike

     into one, trapped in the space between your palm and mine,

                         and prayed all night that the ceiling wouldn’t fall.

iii.

the sun bobbed in your throat, sinking downcast, and i

felt the rivulets in your limbs slipping through me,

                                                   taking me across the sea

                                                     to better, bitter days.

your fingers were webbed, and mine, encased

in glass; still, you promised oranges

             ripe on the kitchen counter and

             bobbing like the sunset in your throat.

iv.

i might have loved you some days,

                             when i wasn’t waiting for you to strike

like a cobra.

i think i loved you when the sheets were shaded pencil hues

lifted from the new york sketchbooks, hands and eyes and faces

            when the world slowed to a stutter

         and the sun made yellow pads across our palms.

i think i loved you when you

bent your spine to accommodate my arms,

                       peach and down and feathered clouds of skin, 

and promised to be ugly when you got old.

i think i remembered not to kiss you,

                                                                 once,

after we set a fire in the bathroom and 

i feared tasting the ash on your tongue.

v.

i won’t leave it out of the poem that

                           i loved you, or didn’t, you decide,

or that i was the mattress and you

the wet blanket, shimmying through my skeleton,

or the time light fell across your chest

                                         like the stars we spilt, tearing open

                                         old scars and chasing

                                         golden light across the valley of your torso.

i won’t leave out your tousled hair,

white in the strenuous daylight,

and i won’t forget to write your tongue

like it didn’t know its way around the cavities of my throat

and leave me parched.

vi.

i said i didn’t love you, but,

on saturdays i eat oranges in the downtown dream and

coat my throat with your name again.