Slugs inch along like breathing berries on rain-slick
pavement. Night-blossoms unfurl in high-rise panes above
a carved hawk that lifts from its perch once you drift off.
Nearly every bin stays untouched, nearly every possum
makes it to dawn, and nearly every gust still coils through
the service lane toward your sill, carrying the tang of frying
oil and masa from the taquería around the corner.
Everything conspires to nudge your memory—you who
are tender to refuse and solitude, who overheats under any
shard of daylight, who senses glaciers muttering deep
within your shadowed hemispheres. A tray of cubes clatters
to the floor in the unit above. The courier drops off journals
with twisted blossoms on the front that you later understand
are bodies. Then abruptly she greets you by name, noting
her child was once the same brief four months as your pal’s,
murmuring, That’s a sweet age. Then a nearly
forgotten companion texts you out of nowhere,
Remember the fish. And of course you do. You recall the
fish, that exact fish, that exact hue, that exact tilt your
friend envisions. No syntax can strip this from either of
you. And you sense your own existence lifting from its
murky basin to greet you, its wan visage luminous, its
veiled eyes shimmering blue-green-blue as you’d always
pictured, its thin slits widening to draw breath in the dim.
by David M. Alper
David M. Alper’s poetry appears in Press 53, Harpur Palate, Common Ground Review, and elsewhere. He is an educator in New York City.
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