It is a lullaby, your hand behind my head
This is to say goodbye, this is to say this door is locked
A blue flower made of glass
This small house made of wood
Or concrete walls that I cover with paint
I try to tell you that I am tired in a million different ways
And when you walk in my room I don't have a shirt on
Or when I walk out
Or when these exits and entrances intersect
We sit on my bed and I show you where I am going on a map
Tonight we list the cities where we could live together
And you ask if I am seducing you
In this house the ceilings are too low
And the walls are covered with love letters
Boring letters written on notebook paper
I tell you only a little bit
Or you show me photographs of hotels where the light is red
Or of these bodies running
Or images that I can't see clearly
And there are numbers:
Seven weeks
Sixty negatives
Five in the morning
And I am too embarrassed to sing to you
The room is lit too brightly
The walls are too white
Too close
Once I wrote you a letter about fire
Pasted it to construction paper
Put it in my desk and never sent it to you
I tell you what the word vertebrae means and touch your spine
When I see you from across the room everything becomes still
No movement
No sound
No bodies
Or when you walk across the street
Metals chairs along a sidewalk
Outside in spring before the air is confident
Before I have been here
There is a phone booth on the other side of the intersection
And Chinese characters
Written in magic marker
I wish that you would tell me about Prague
About vending machines
About this other air
by Claire Schadler