[I didn't ask myself why]
I didn't ask myself why
at 4:30 a.m. so I half slept
over a skillet frying shredded
carrots till they were crisp
and stringy and doused them
with cloudy vinegar to eat in bed,
filled up holes from yesterday
and also the holes from tomorrow,
having drunk enough coffee to think so far ahead.
I was mostly a head
slowly becoming a body
with a face and a voice until 9:56,
when Leo found a hole in his day
and walked through my door
wearing his motorcycle helmet like an astronaut
stepping onto the moon. I loved his tired
smile and his blue eyes shining
at me, over me, through me, Jesus—
the gravity changed in my room
until it was time for him to go to work
and time for me to go outside,
and I wondered if it were just me or was it sad here too?
My neighborhood turned bioluminescent and blue and lemon
in the late afternoon and the best way
to catch the light is to run
through it, to move the street
beneath me as the singular diviner
of how I let the city touch me,
how much I let it take.
When I got home I rolled
a bottle of Cynar over my thighs
and spilled it down my legs,
all over my hands.