070: steam

It drives people in, to the interiors, into the catalogues of plates, coffee cups, small spirals of steam, concentrates of the hissing rain outside. The pavement smokes, the umbrellas cower. The people run, take shelter under anything three-dimensional. They run blindly. Everyone, everyone talks about the rain, the cold, how unseasonal, as if every summer they’ve lived through has been a straight-up glass of sunshine. I stand in the midst of the people run out of the mist, hand their plates and their coffees to them, say to them yes, I hate it too, which is a lie.

069: dust

The dust from the sky and ceiling
clusters the glass, darkens the thoughts as they appear.
Everything is sun-streaked, water-tight, empty,
over-saturated.
Our lips may as well have bled.
I remember the forget-me-nots
pouring themselves over the dell,
how you laughed at me,
how you forgot about me.
I remember the way my face looked
in the glass after the dark forced me out
of our bed and into the doorway.
The bruise that formed invisibly,
the bruise I gave myself.
The kitchen, its sketched clutter suspended
underwater, the shadows like arms
keeping me out.