3/14/2024

And if I have to go back. To every place we ever laughed, telling jokes between stories of better times, I was never going to be a part of. Memory, the fellow fool hung, between our breaths. And aimless tours in shop windows, pointing out all the things we didn’t want.

On the bus again, I now lean my head against the window. A stranger coughs next to me and I hope he gets me sick. Wouldn’t that be intimate, a stranger’s spit in my mouth, like when we kissed at dance clubs. Throwing jeers into the crowd, throwing cheaply made plates on the streets of Crete. And those were always supposed to break.

Now in the taxi cab, the world is spinning, between Oliver talking loudly and trying pho for the first time, hunched over and longing, to stare at strangers with better dimples and windbreakers worn open, to parade through crowded streets, hoping they notice our love and not that we are on holiday. Quenching thirst and throwing it back down, sore throats from screaming. I hate the clack of flip flops on cobbled streets. Get over yourself, picking low hanging fruit from sour orange trees. At least they smell nice, yea? Yea, that was always their only intention.