I’ve sat home wearing leggings, turquoise, a look
I rather like but wont go out in and I carve smiley faces
through the skin of oranges to pass the time.
Before the orange there was the pillow
and the horror movie and the two cats hissing at each other.
They’re mating. Or dying. Between the air shaft
I felt it, the thumbs down tunnel of a pendulum
crashing in two. The physics of pressure
and there is too much we forgot to type up.
Inside the peel came the scent
like a thin black line from a burnt
electron emission. 4.5 over and a week ago
you asked me about the best jacket
for the change in seasons, danced
on my fire escape to model your chosen one
for the skyline. I dreamt I was a cocoon.
A reversing liquid state without the promise
of wings— and now I’m positive
it was my jealousy;
you blended with every colour.
The day’s sick or I’m sick of it—
because it’s Saturday, because nobody
will deliver my laundry, because a stranger
is strapping your mouth shut
and every piece that tore at you
should have tore my skin also.
I remember swimming
through the spin cycle, drowning
in liquid helium.
New York, you’re supposed to
love us through this
but that’s the thing about summer—
it always turns to fall
and the rain always moves on.