Delinquents

We steal pipes from vendors in the streets

on January afternoons when the sidewalks

sweat with melting ice,

painted gray as if their maker

had poured a bucket of swatted moths

over the cement.

We are expelling smoke like the french

but it isn't as graceful

over here.

I am hacking to gain back my lungs

grasping for oxygen like the oldest star

trying to reach a retina

before the centennial anniversary

of it's death.

Crisping sugared pecans and the days garbage

perfume your neck.

I drink it in when I lean into you against

the brassiness of the village at night,

and the plastic of the taxi seat.

We are intoxicated by Manhattan in retrograde,

the constant exchange of smog and poetry

glitter and sex.

We fit right in here

we say.

This is where we'll happen

this is the happening.

If we make it here our houses will never burn

our tiptoes, never blister.

We will never implode

like all those lost diamonds under the crust.

Once we are in the city,

nothing but art,

we will lay on frayed oriental rugs

and make friends with the mice

and each others insides.

This is where we will happen

we say.

This must be it.

Today was one of the ones where the space you filled felt bigger than me. I wish I could say that i spend the majority of my days not remembering you. I am a vision of determination, the manifestation of the American dream tinged with just the fingers of idiocy. Synonyms are all around us. But instead, the majority of my moments are spent in the wake of your absence and my dilemma, the dilemma of deadly deafening doldrums of hypertension, panic attacks, and wine. There is geometry all over my thighs, traced in the embrace of nighttime when the call went off the line and we decided I was trouble enough for both of us.

We walk the streets of Manhattan, stolen pipes jangling in our pockets, me always checking the time, and you always checking the rest of the world to make sure it hadn't stopped moving. This will always be moving love, we are, always in rotation. My retinas have learned the pathway from my palms, to my cigarette, to my keys, and finally to your front door and the whole trip is a waste of time, because I will always turn around.

Our mother's have cast us in lillies in the hope that we'll be as gorgeous as they never were. I wish I could say that I hate that I am failing them, but frankly, nothing gives me better pleasure right now than to set a match to this house, slowly filling itself with my liquor, normalcy is intoxicating.

Tonight the space where you are supposed to be fills bigger than me. I will set this house on fire. Nothing will be better than watching it burn.