I see you in cities you’ve never seen.
I see you in cities I’ve never seen.
I see us in the city we constructed
lived within
died upon,
the rooftop where we sat to pass the time
as it grew,
slowly,
a suburban sprawl
burning at the horizon.
We built an airport.
Remember?
Two planes departing
separate from each other
far and apart.
A getaway, you said, in case
booming over freeways
leading to a house
and a bed
we didn’t sleep in.
You hated take off,
your heart raced as my landing gear
retracted into the holding hull
the distress becoming bags
we would never claim.
Our windblown music trails through alleyways,
into the dark corners of our city.
I met you underground.
We became the planners, the officials.
The subway’s public art —
mosaics cracking up
in the damp subterranean —
we decided to restore in our bathroom.
Do you remember?
A girl began to sing and you gave her a look
that I came to know as the redeemer of infinite strangeness.
We want people we will never meet,
something unknown,
once the known becomes a suit of normalcy.
You saw sad eyes on the train and wanted to save them,
wanted green irises to roll back white in ecstasy,
residents in a collective O who would take you as their queen
and you’d hold them in defense,
an infidelity of passing happenstance
You begged for strangers
so we created them.
A heavy populace.
A level playing field affords opportunity
for legions of conquest.
So many people
we created so many people
and with those people
came problems
came acts
irreversible and constant as interactions progressed
amidst the sunset on our creation.
You thrived on praise
for having paved the streets
and let those you deemed worthy
seduce you on your own sidewalk.
We were neighbors once.
You said we could prepare,
as if against doomsday,
you told me there was a way
and I followed
the wrong map of my own city
lost in an earthquake along fractured lines of no fault
the geography shaken into something
recently inexplicable
you took me in,
and I took you in,
we took too much.
I hailed a taxi one night.
The night was yours
and you deserved to have it in all the ways
that our city never was.
I told him to take the nearest bridge.
To take the back roads and cross streets.
He ran red lights as I told him
what I ran from,
thankful we never enforce speed at our limits.
I asked him for quickness
he delivered
and we fled from the skyline.