I want you to know I've imagined
you and I crossing Hawthorne Bridge
where the water scuds in Payne Grey
so I can level the surface of your eyes and say
I've never seen stillness and stitched peaks
more striking than this waterway
Until now.
I'd pull you like a skipping stone
down the concrete path that hems
sky to earth, our bodies
dressed in cadet hue
to better let this place digest us
& I will shout, Can't you feel my pulse
stagger in this city's heart?
I want to traipse you up deserted streets
of cocaine-stained benches and drink in
the absinthe of an aurora sky
from the space between our cupped palms
so I can say
that's the color I taste when you hold my hand.
I would carry you to its urban soul
made of pages & spines so worn
you can read the braille of raised ink
and say, See, there? my ghosts spin in these paginated rooms
where they finally came to rest the moment
your lips introduced themselves
to mine.
I want to sip in Pho & fill our bodies with sour gose
to rid us of our lesser selves until we are so full
of this place
We become it.
It becomes us, this city that grows beneath our feet,
its ink wrapping under our dermis like roots
To bind us, oak and linden,
until, I imagine, we whisper,
'I know this place better than I know myself.'