That I am walking home in a city so old
its stone shares substance
with its darkness. That loneliness
sinks leaden and still older
through both. That my throat
aches dense to stretch
and die strangled on her body.
That it cannot swallow her whole.
That towers and walls fold inward
to silhouette against the bruised,
deep morning. That they remember a color
humming wet behind that sky-
that I have splashed toward its single note
and tasted only murk.
That she herself mouths syllables of harmony,
sprays them back between her teeth
like shit, or a giggle.
That a shit-dripping pigeon with its beak
can pull veins out of marble
or a man’s leg. That stone dries
to mere crust, can shear and crumble
and only sharpen its corners
for your spine. That a stone sky,
the kind I wish for, a vault,
would entomb us both. That we’d cling
blind in the night of its belly,
cramped, squalid as lichen.