In the past, when I invented so much weather. When I imagined
weather’s sweet consistency here to stay. There are clusters
of days when my energy wanes like the words that do not come to me.
Days when all I can see is the man’s face
against the dark rib of night. The man’s face against
my own ribs. If I do not name him, it must mean he never existed, never
curled needlessly between my thighs. If I do not name him, he
is no more than fragmentary longing. The moon will always
block his face from my ribs. There was this man. I was afraid of him.
I’ve been told that the poems always come first. When they don’t come, I admit
I grow fearful as the saccharine dusk rising above the roofs
of neighborhood houses. I need new architecture for my body. I thought
I would need men to long for me. There was the whole summer spent in the city
when I could not breathe. The outside air wild
with fireworks flaring against the sidewalk. There were women
in bathing suits. Men without shirts. The air hot as a dusty road,
pungent with cigarettes and old beer. I was in a bed, perhaps my bed, and there
was the man I did not name. He was there, against my own self, against
the parts of myself that make up precisely who I am. I said help me,
I’m so in need. Like a nostalgic spell he was there and he did not.
