Hours

Because the day was unseasonably hot,

we left every window open and almost every door.

Not wanting to touch each other

felt like a punishment.

We wore each other’s clothes outside.

The strays, the steeples, the city’s pale walls.

We ate shaved ice with hibiscus syrup

in the revival house. When Streisand burst into song,

you laughed boyishly, or cried.

Where we dipped injera

into stew, classical music played from old speakers.

“Liebesfreud” was the only piece I knew

(my favorite heroine performed it on TV

when I was young), and as I typed the name into your phone,

those faint lines gathered around your smiling eyes

and you saw me.

I won’t see fall or winter from your apartment,

where you talk in your sleep

and sketch with red charcoal.

I will have already flown home.

By sunset, the air was acrid with exhaust.

That night you dropped your key

by the gate. Snails clung to stalks

still dark with flowers, blue at their edges.