Distraction

It was nice to be back in the Grassroot.
We hadn’t been there in awhile,
not since before Paris
and the cafes, and the little dishes of peanuts.

It was just after five on a Sunday afternoon,
a day of walking the city behind us,
an evening of home cooked curry and a movie ahead of us.

I told you I was sorry for being distracted
and for mistaking other people’s joy for what I wanted.

I told you that I won’t do that anymore. That I will recognize
the good in my own life, the way it arches away from me
and comes back around again, like a sunrise or the way a good poem should.

I promise to not ruin it, to not to squeeze it to tight
demand things from it, shake it so hard in my fist
till it shatters and I cry about all the blood.

I tell you I just get distracted sometimes,
like a goldfish with no memory or a crow with something shiny.
You laugh.
But I mean it and in those times I think that my joy is empty joy
or that maybe I’m doing this whole life all wrong.

I tell you maybe if I had two lives, I could have it all.
You give me a side smile.

“But not anymore. You aren’t going to do that anymore,” you say with a nod.
You lift your drink to your mouth.
“Not any more,” I answer, staring out the door
to the flashing neon lights in the tattoo parlor across the street.
It doesn’t look like April outside. It looks like September.
But then again, those two are the same, aren’t they?

sans-abri

They are different in every city.
In Paris the gypsy women sit as if in prayer
their hand locked, their backs bent, a ragged Buddha,
the bowl placed a foot away from them right in the flow
of traffic so you have to step around it.

Or if you leave money, you have to be careful,
the bowl is tiny. You must lean down close to them,
to get the little euro coins to land in it with a loud clink.

They have signs. But not like the signs in America.
They do not ask for beer. Or for a ticket out of New York City.
They simply say, J’ai faim.
On the Champs Elysees a gypsy girl rubs her belly
which she has pushed out. She tells me in French she is pregnant
and homeless. She begs for money.
Another girl up the block has the same story.
I tell her I don’t speak French and move along.

I live in cities. I have always lived in cities.
But those are the women,
the men, carry dogs. Neatly groomed puppies that romp
around the sewer caps at the Pont Neuf.
It is clever. If you do not want to give to them,
surely you wouldn’t let a puppy starve.
I wonder aloud where they get these dogs.

It is different in every city. Some have stories,
some are stoic, some beg, some entertain, some threaten
and frighten.

But then we rounded the corner and there he was.
He had no bowl. He had no sign.
He had no story.
He sat on the sidewalk, away from the tourist sections.
He had his back against the car.
His knees tucked in.
He had only two hands.

And they clung to the 6 year old boy in his lap
as if to stop them both from spinning off the very earth.

You say to me, “That was a child.”
and I nod because I have no more words.

Lost in the Pantheon

They called it God’s eye,
but really it was just the center of the dome
in the Pantheon. And from it, they hung a wire
and the pendulum started to sway.

He was afraid of blood
so he studied physics
and he proved back in 1851 that the earth rotated,
that it turned her back each night on the fixed sun,
like a jealous lover.
I stood there watching that gold ball
swing back and forth and back and forth, so slowly at times,
like gravity wasn’t something it had to worry about.

I thought to myself how amazing it must have been back then,
back when Science was unstoppable
when religious fervor had died down, for just a moment
and we all stopped arguing over ancient stories
and martyred men. We collectively wiped the blood from our hands
and craned our necks to the sky to watch the stars
wink on and off,
to watch the earth groan and roll in the heavens like
a wooden top in slow motion. We were citizens of the heavens
and we sought answers
without fear but with hope and desire,
what used to be the devil’s tools.

I watched it go back and forth
and wanted to touch it
before you showed up and asked me where I had been.
You thought I had wandered off,
and you said, “Let’s go down to the crypt and find Rousseau”
and we did.

Days Before the River Seine

It’s waiting out there for me now,
In the light of Paris, rumbling little waves
in the rain perhaps
and I am here still, unpacked and ill prepared
heated with a slight fever.

Another river.
I have these rivers, the water kept.
I have the Mississippi in a jug on my shelf,
I have the Thames.
I’ve had the Seine before, but I was a just a girl.
Now I am grown.

It is the water that calls the water of me,
the tiny rivers in my arms,
the land of my skin.
I come back to the places where they come apart
where they meet bigger water and surrender themselves.
Places where they fall, separating drop for drop, each little cell.
To the places where they divide cruelly
my side from yours,

the way my skin divides my side from yours,
my legs are bank side
the river rolling from me, in those moments
where we come apart
and break down,
base,
animalistic,

coming to the water’s edge,
our heads bowed in reverence.
This is a prayer of sorts,
a pilgrimage,
and when it is over,
I will feel full
for a while at least.
Understand the ache will come back
but not right away.

Don't Panic

It was already over by the time I got to the intersection.
But he was just beginning to cry.
There were two cars up on the curb,

and the man and the woman paced in circles.
“That’ll catch that bastard on camera,” the gas station attendant tells me.
I nod.

The man’s face contorts. He takes his phone away from his ear
and holds it at his stomach as if he has been shot. Or as if he can’t bear
to hear the other tiny voice.

It seems to be taking me forever to get across the street.
She dabs at her head with a cloth.
I can see the blood.

“It’s alright,” he tells her. “Don’t get upset. Don’t panic.”
and then he doubles over again. He lets out a whimper and
says “Hello?” into the phone as if he just answered it.

She sits on the curb, watching him, dabbing the blood from her head
in little gentle pecks, the way you would clean a baby.
She sighs.

He sits next to her. His is huge, a great big huge man,
with spotty facial hair and a white baseball hat.
She seems even smaller next to him.
Like a bird twitching next to a walrus.

He cries full on now. I wish that I weren’t here.
The men at the dealership next door wear suits and shake hands.
They laugh too loud as if this side of the street can’t hear them.

The woman turns her pale face up, the blood slides quickly down her forehead,
to her nose, like a river searching for the ocean.
Her eyes are blank, her lips tight as she works to keep herself in.
She watches the first drops of rain come down.
When they land, I tell myself she smiled, but I know I am lying.

I listen for the siren wail
but don’t hear it.
Not even 10 blocks later.
Not even as I fumble with my key at the door, desperate to get inside.

Snow and Ice

In the days before you were named,
the streetlights outside were shut off.
There were power outages
and crime sprees.
The electric range was cold all night.

In the days before you were named,
there were floods, the water lapping
over the railing at the bridge.
The octopus flopping in the waves
threatening to come ashore.

In the days before you were named,
your grandmother stood waiting
in the doorway
between living and dying.
Your grandfather boarded up all the windows.

In the days before you were named,
there was pacing and the crunch of snow and ice
a wetness that crept into my boot,
making the walk home,
groceries in hand,
small dogs growling,
more treacherous than ever.

But also in the days before you were named,
there was a cobalt sky,
the scratch of pen over paper,
a woman’s laugh coming through the walls.
There was a hope for early spring,
and fresh flowers set at a gravesite.
There was a moment for all of us,
breath held, eyes closed.
There was music, light and lilting
a cadence worth remembering
in the days before you were named.

Separate Checks

You tell the lady we’ll take separate checks.
There was tea – English breakfast
and coffee.
And I’m nervous because it’s Tuesday
and I have five dollar in my wallet
and need to get some sort of lunch
before working the late shift.

The lady at the register rings it up and looks at me.
Her hands suddenly look much older than her face,
as they whip through and straighten the five singles I gave her.
The total is exactly forty-four cents more than
I have in my wallet.

I dig through my pockets
wondering if I can remember
how to say forty-four in French.
I’ve been practicing but I still can’t.

I don’t leave a tip in the jar and I pray you don’t notice.
I’m normally not that kind of person, I want to say.

We walk down to 4th Avenue
and part there.
The change in my pocket jingles.
My wallet is empty
and I wonder if I have enough for a bagel
but decide on white rice
because I know that only costs a dollar and change
and I can feel the heaviness of quarters as my fingers
dig through the metal,
saying goodbye to you on the corner.

We talked about writing, dogs, neighborhoods, children.
Change, we talked about change.
I tested the weight of words
like I test the weight of change in my pocket,
stirring it like a soup, like something edible

and realizing that maybe these kinds of things,
these mornings of conversation, and tea and coffee
maybe aren’t all that bad.
I think I need to stop being afraid of people.
And maybe my husband was right
when he said I could use a new friend.