(no subject)
There are no seagulls left here. They have migrated to warmer climates, to nests built inside chimneys, to Central America, to clean white ships on the equator, where strong brown arms-sun and salt weathered arms-hold out fingers of alluring fresh sea turtle meat. It is a feast.
You are sitting on the bench. You stare at your feet, refusing to look at me. You tell me Mary Jane is the prettiest name for shoes. You are wearing them now. They are modest, duff black, somber and silly at once. I want badly to tell you to look up but there aren't any birds. I look at my boots. Doc Martens.
You have your lunch with you, a sour pasta salad you bought for $1.69, but you don't eat it. Instead you break the bow-ties into moist halves with your thumbs and drop them by your feet. We are waiting for the gulls to come and take our messages with them to more clement weather.
Who is Mary Jane? Why are you wearing her shoes? Who named you, your father or your mother? Are you on good terms with them? How do you talk to them without a phone? Do you remember the day we first met? Why do you tear the bow-ties in half? Do you think the seagulls will choke on them? How do you talk to anybody? Do you remember the day we first met by the concrete benches, how there were seagulls and pigeons everywhere? The way those big maple leaves flapped gently in the wind? How the seagulls ate bread out of our hands? How short your hair used to be? What makes you think the they're coming back? What makes you think seagulls even like pasta salad?
Why do you always pay exact change?
I sit down next to you. Hold you. You lean into me but you are still looking at your shoes. I look at your shoes with you. It doesn't matter. For reasons I never fully understood, it gets colder higher up, the more we stretch towards the sun, the nearer we get to home.
You are sitting on the bench. You stare at your feet, refusing to look at me. You tell me Mary Jane is the prettiest name for shoes. You are wearing them now. They are modest, duff black, somber and silly at once. I want badly to tell you to look up but there aren't any birds. I look at my boots. Doc Martens.
You have your lunch with you, a sour pasta salad you bought for $1.69, but you don't eat it. Instead you break the bow-ties into moist halves with your thumbs and drop them by your feet. We are waiting for the gulls to come and take our messages with them to more clement weather.
Who is Mary Jane? Why are you wearing her shoes? Who named you, your father or your mother? Are you on good terms with them? How do you talk to them without a phone? Do you remember the day we first met? Why do you tear the bow-ties in half? Do you think the seagulls will choke on them? How do you talk to anybody? Do you remember the day we first met by the concrete benches, how there were seagulls and pigeons everywhere? The way those big maple leaves flapped gently in the wind? How the seagulls ate bread out of our hands? How short your hair used to be? What makes you think the they're coming back? What makes you think seagulls even like pasta salad?
Why do you always pay exact change?
I sit down next to you. Hold you. You lean into me but you are still looking at your shoes. I look at your shoes with you. It doesn't matter. For reasons I never fully understood, it gets colder higher up, the more we stretch towards the sun, the nearer we get to home.