Lisbon

We meet midway to walk white cobbles

under a fish-flesh gray sky.

Europe is collapsing; we are collapsing

always and again no matter how hard

we love one another. I don’t understand

our failure, where the feed loops

back and spits us into another country,

another junior suite reenacting this same,

same beat of   a scene that begins, rises,

never ends, always ends —

Our intentions don’t meet,

their courses set differently

by a force you don’t believe in,

could be as simple as life. I want

to be the wife you don’t want.

You won’t let go of my wrist.

I resist, threaten, bully, acquiesce.

We write the next act of The Alchemist

in New York, Lisbon, a beach,

a bar, star-crossed maybe

from different galaxies. You approach,

I retreat. You retreat, I reproach.

The manic two-step jitters

over North Africa’s dunes

farther than our hero, Santiago, can see.

I rise in the night to find the sharp knife

that came with the pears as a courtesy.