Reunion

Morning clocks in and the ancient white of  Venice

dresses into day. I put on the Fugees in a damp church

with Madonnas swelling, welled in humidity,

and I still have nausea from the plane

where I took up a whole row and stared

at the seatbelt sign glowing, imagining the underbelly

of the bird, coated in a buttery trans-Atlantic moon.

I haven’t seen you in a year and now, when I do,

I get jumpy, make us stop into church after church

as we watch the green water churn against stone.

Venice has no streetwear, I say, everyone here looks

like a widow. It always looks like a Sunday.

Really, I’m being defensive about dressing

like an American so I stick hard to stereotypes.

When we get to your apartment, you wash tomatoes,

water rushing on your hands, directly into the sink.

You spit a small harmless seed as we sit on stools

in the lime kitchen and eat them whole. Plum bodies

so fragrant, they make me cry and here I am,

tearing over tomatoes, jetlagged, lagging, delaying

everything, with at least three churches in view.

We’re surrounded by time and god.

                             It makes children of all of us.

And I am not a stupid child.

Before I left, I gathered my breath and for what?

Some grand gesture. No. We keep our heads down.

We study the feet of medieval saints. We make small talk

against the big year of our absence from each other.