Transience

Transience

I went searching the streets today

For you mainly

I ended up in all sorts of places

I walked along and let the warm soak deep into my skin first

Tracing

I walked twelve blocks in this heinous hot hot heat

I tried to feel what it’s like not to be able to afford one moments solace from it

That’s dedication

For someone with an aversion to sun

I thought of how I imagine you

A dog with mange

A filthy half-breed mutt who runs the streets both night and day

so I spent some time looking

Down manholes and into alley ways

and I spent all my thoughts on visions of you

Foraging for food

And clean water

And adoration

From any little girl who will take you for what you are

Beautiful dirty damaged limping thing

With a talent for making her feel fiercely protected

It would never last, you and she

You know

The best things never do

Because soon you would whimper and beg

To be let out alone

Scratch through her backyard door

To be left to your own devices

So so so scared

That the aloneness is the most beautiful thing about you

Looking for her

Or just leaving

You would be out again in the blistering sun

Where I’d be looking for you

And when the steam room roads start to suffocate me

Then there are

Rows and rows

Categories and categories

Subjects upon subjects

Of books

That take the liberty of waiting

Patiently in the thick cold air

For you Or I

Or the so many more original than we are

Who read

Or write

For themselves solely

who would be satisfied to lock the end result away

The lesson or the verse

Without anyone ever knowing it was once learned or composed

(and who the credit belonged to)

There are names here

Written by men who speak directly to god

Or criminals who are slowly learning to know better

That you might read

I breathe in their cool-cold pages

Quick and sharp like my lungs can’t wait for the air

I hope that by thinking

“I don’t want anything from you.”

You might show pity and excite me

With

One.graceful.word.

I hold my breath

Fifteen sixteen seventeen

Nothing

Once more eighteen nineteen twenty

I ponder a journey to the Ankeny butcher

Of disrobing a fresh purchase of fatty hind meat

From its white paper and scotch-tape shell

Of squeezing its raw muscle fibers in two clenched fists

Sponging its red blood meatiness against each city brick

All along the walls as I pass

Everywhere I go like breadcrumbs

And you can pick up the scent

So when I quiet the click of my heels

I won’t just fantasize that sound

won’t just be imagining

This time

The scrape scrape scrape of your paws on the concrete behind me

A walk that has grown over the years

Into a lazy malnourished saunter

One that needles up

Hard

Into each haggard limb before you take a new step

Because your nails curl under now

To meet the scorching pavement

It’s been too long since your claws were clipped

But it isn’t a moment with that before I’m here

Back here

with the moist lemony-lime smell

Back in the low diner light

With the green felt tables and only an unlucky few so early

Here where I can order what I used to watch you drink

Stare down at the glass to act as if you just left

For a short spell

Even though I’m sure

I don’t think you’re ever coming back.