The lighting is low, but still manages to
glint off a silver coin that rattles, impiously,
into a drain.
The moon is pressed against the flint wall,
like some hunted Romeo, and she breathes -
ever so softly -
on my skin as I walk past.
It would seem that silence is a chapter and
the clocks have dictated the turn of the page.
And I, love, have been so sweet as to
walk from your image
rather than flush your cheeks with thoughts of me.
The cobbles are forgiving:
they disguise my darkened steps
as shadows of lampposts. This is what I want the most.
Not to be seen, not to be followed
by a strangers cursory eye through the nephron
of the city. I have given the city
my beating heart, a gift to the gutter.
I shall see it squirrel my ring away and float it
down to your halls for you to see,
to pick up, the next morning, the next day.
I do not expect anything: this you should know.
But the city, the city, see, she waits for me and
willingly I relinquish myself to her.
Do not be jealous, lover; she is uncommonly kind
and will accept you into her veins, her drains where
she hides her orphan treasure. I know the measure
of her, and of you, I do, I do.
I’ll see who can get the better of you,
of you.

Do not wait up for me. There is a morning light
you cannot see, a kite-shaped herald in the
quadrangle, in the tangle of the grass in the square
in the middle of my city. It will not last.
I walk on, to my class of friends, of work,
of houses. It does not do to make amends. I will scrabble
about in the dirty culvert at the side of the road,
for my ring and my heart,
my baby, my abortion.
The motion of my hands rocked me back on my heels.
This baby didn’t cry like the last one did, all
pink and white and squeals.
My velocity stopped me there; there, where you found me
in the morning, in the cold
cold morning of dew and strangers and wheels of
passing bicycles; this I all saw from my prone
position in the place in the grass
where the kite had been.