among the disorganized buildings of
clutter she rested her spoon daintily,
the yogurt still swaying like a boneless
body in her barely open-mouth laughing:

this is where I spend my days and nights pouring
vanilla tea with russian cigarettes
and honey cream dancing alone to
Italian disco and fantasizing
about the windows across the street.

are you still in that basement apartment
in the city? she asked, sussing out the
final slivers of yogurt from the tin--
carefully, as an archeologist
combing out the truth of tutankhamen.

while I told her about my high-rise buildings
and low-rise thongs, my dinners there and here,
the nights of wandering lazily through
streets in silence, a mist poking its toes

into every corner before alighting
from a bit of drooping roof to fall among
the fractured flowers and all along my
life in seven boxes inside a stone square
like a parapet,

she leaned forward, then back, lifted her right
leg in a flamingo, curling her toes
gracefully behind.

do you remember my pet parakeet?
she said. she sat on my shoulder
cleaned my hair strand by strand.
she used to fly into the wall sometimes.