I saw you stretch like a tree branch bends
under shaking windows that reflected the light that's sent
from the moon to the water that fell off the clouds to the streets next to the buildings and miles beneath the tops of them.
You found your feet inside puddles when the sidewalk declined before crossing the block to the other side.

There's a lot of ways to get where we're goin’ and we picked every way that people on drugs would take.
We came to a fence in an alleyway--we crawled on the ground and stacked plastic crates--
you made crass remarks on how much the cold makes you shake.
Your hair is darker than the night cause I can't see the strands against your hands while you feel your way through.

The taxis stopped slowing down when we became the rain, as the smoke from your breath ascended away,
looking backwards as if from distancing trains that moan through the morning mist
carried from places so far away they don't exist, apart from on the curve of your lips when you have words to say or if some
just slip.

We held dimorphic prayers in our hands and with that corroded the streets
and rocks and the sands.
We saw people undress in different lighting they perceived to make them look best,
so the lighting was varied or the TV’s were on,
pulsing blue on varied breasts and embracing arms.
Old men smoked cigars on high rise balconies in a patrician manner, their wives in the bathrooms applying self tanner.
Morbific by nature but constrained to the ground—we were higher than they could ever dream and all colors of the sky we attained.
We saw the edge of trashcans lining places of development. We saw piers
peering out from under the cities gown.
We felt our chests move high and our stomachs left on the ground.

We must be of purpose or some form of worship
as what we are now is as undefined as a god or a sermon,
our faces connected the absence of feeling and the mist that never moved in the sky.
The stars began to emit barreling tones of complacence, tones we never cared to hear before.
You took way too long inside the bathroom sometimes. Bad habits never die.
Dwindling smoke curiously peeked out from under a green awning and was swept away
forever like a departing train
and beneath it an empty bottle of Lancers Rosé kept dry from the falling rain.