Chalk and Dew
It’s like how idle lips forget a language,
fluency stretches out on the cool pavement
of your summer house, yawning, losing itself,
tracing faded chalked-up words,
but it’s all rubble and alphabet rubbish,
when words don’t mean the same thing anymore.
dew setting on a pavilion signals a cool night prior,
a sign I can still read. everything leaves traces
but some betray themselves more easily than others.
no — not betray, you should know the bare
are never betrayed. you, sitting beneath,
watching the world spill out in chalky alphabet.
we all spell ourselves out, orange or blue or green,
never quite learning how to read.
we hold the outside out, turn in on ourselves,
two gears rotating, away from its peer.
whipping our heads, conspiratorial,
we start etching our letters backwards,
with secret symbols,
with no intention for deciphering eyes.
you see everything from the pavement, it humbles you.
look up the city angels, warm lit window guardians.
they hold your hand in the dim cool night,
the kind you know begets dew, the promise of breaking
morning, coronation of new sun,
the kind of promise, between us, due.
observing, fourth floor window; chatty champagne exchange.
silent vowels forming, in and out of lips,
taking turns in each mouth, spat out
and swallowed by the conversation opposite,
never with regard for aftertaste.
anonymous fingers draw the curtains shut
(from the fourth floor, mind you),
never catching sight, never realizing
they’ve shut you out the spectacle.
your eye nerves jutting out your head,
perched on a stranger’s balcony,
clipped, they bob back into your sockets.
it felt good to be let in.
you’re not uninvited if you were never known.
we all want to be let in,
and still we shut curtains
when we think no one’s looking.
yet, I grow fonder each day of things
that won’t move for us.
construction on the convenient route,
the one-way calendar complex,
crossed arms of ones we love,
plated ginger for a picky eater,
no care to appease, coerce, or bribe.
they tell us we’re worthy of debate, like two palms
pressing, whose atoms don’t fall through each other.
a reassurance of existence in separate sibling truths.
I grow fonder of things that won’t move for us
just as the ones that do. we are not tyrants,
strong tides wade through us too.
kiss the pull, handshake a push, firmly.
souls rarely meet further than tangents.
say your prayers to distances between,
so we don’t all collapse
in on each other.
but I’m setting down my chalk now,
approaching your pavilion,
and I’ll have to admit, I half hope we dew.
