written By
You return to me in fragments,
in particles. In bits and cuts.
The safety-pinned t-shirt
from the Ritz. A favorite pale pink
jacket. A silver bracelet from Spain.
The slanting light in one or another
of our rooms up under the eaves.
The lines from movies we’d repeat
The gold ring from Cape Town
we passed back and forth. The Pepsi Light
and blue box of Dunhill cigarettes.
All those postcards from the Met.
The long gray afternoons and endless
evenings we studied the liner notes.
We memorized the lyrics. American
Girl and Moondance and Blue.
We spoke exclusively in dreams.
All the children I’d collect,
all the documentaries I’d direct.
Your celebrated appearances on
stage and screen. Your face, wide-eyed
on the cover of Interview Magazine.
The beautiful men we’d discard
along the way. I told it like
a bedtime story:
Where we’d be in five or ten or
twenty years. We were never here.
We were never now.
