December


I swear to god, when I was six I knew
how to draw a perfect circle. Every night
my perfect circle drops, an orange, and is rotted
into nothing by the dark. I pick at the seeds,
the wrong kind of bird, a flamingo eating wrong
and turning green.

When everything is laid out sterile and neat, gloves on,
they say, "breathe deep. I'll pierce on the exhale."
When darkness fogs in, an interminable moment,
the air in my lungs is suddenly everything
I have to lose. Windows become mirrors;
I watch myself turning slowly blue.

There's a tunnel on the way to the hill.
On the narrow sidewalk is a man with a saxophone,
his shadow concave against the concrete wall as I drive
with the windows up, hearing nothing. From the hill
the city sounds like the ocean, black and distant and a little
beautiful. I wait for the new tide.


(december 2006)