She looks like the sky suns ignite, as they die.

The mystery of his face became a matter I touched on, the rest of the day. The members of the line who’d watched it were now a club, transmitting ruminations though time and space. The girl was Asian, and didn’t’ speak English well; her skin was pretty to perfect; I imagined airbrushes for lesser models of human being. I looked at the neighbor who lived one floor below my building, one building over, who I noticed at the table by the window. The mom who’d slept with a hundred and fifty seven men, much as any man would with pride, cite the number he’d laid, winked at me. We shared a stoned evening on the roof, when the pressure of parenthood threatened to crack her, and show and tell, she poured out her life. Don’t get the wrong idea, she said. About what? I’m thrilled you’re who you are, and you’re sharing it. I’m blessed; look how amazing the moon is. Don’t tell _______ I was here, she said. He’d never understand. But he probably would. Nobody is a wall, without any cracks. We shared that small human moment, and smiled over it, kindly. Zits and all—I laugh about it, whenever we catch yesterday
in a glance now.
In a sleepless night she came back to hem the morning in solitude;
a child screamed in the early distance. I’d suffered the demons of relationships
and all the sorrow and suffering they breed; an hour of sleep, the work day looming—
I wonder why. There I was in the café line, where were you last night? What needs to be hidden?
Philosophical rants destroy loves angels grandstand; I need to know ... I am a free individual, and the storms of the world
can veer to destroy or rebuild me. The essential mist
of no eyes seeing your perch, as the waterfall smashes the rock
it will pulverize; it’s your prerogative to be borrowed by the universe
without knowing
why.