Champagne Problem

I know these things happen in epochs-

Some seal into your bones and others break marrow.

I just guess yesterday,

I wasn’t counting on counting tomorrow.

If I scrape harder, will I cut?

And if I remember to forget

Will the city forget to remember me back?

And if I shed now, 

Will I have to shed again?

And if these old cells need to die-

Will I ever mend?

And if I do nothing, will I stay?

Will the years I spent keep the worst of me at bay?

And if I run. will I run again?

Or will I always be hellbent- on finding home?

And I’m scared to death that the world that yesterday 

Seemed so vast, now is gone, and overly compact.

And if home isn’t a place, a self, or a heart

Will I ever learn the art – of letting go?

Or am I destined forever to be a rolling stone?

But if it’s true what if they say about cells

Could I find a way to hold space

For the next of me to sell?

And hell, if I make this promise, will it just be between 

Me and you?

And if I ossify and change into someone you don’t like

Will you promise to see the next phase of me through?

And I knew these times they are a changin’

I just next expected the rest of my life to arrive so soon.

But if I stay here longer, maybe I won’t disintegrate or break

And if I don’t go back maybe I can find a way 

For the rest of me to stay.

Two nights

Two nights ago, I dreamed you raised my legs and mounted them onto yours.

I rested my head on your shoulder. You clipped my toenails.

Like the most intimate we’ve never been.

Last night, I thought of you while  he raised me onto his lap.

I hoped that somehow all the gin and tonics could fool and cast a mirage.

I closed my eyes, could almost see your eyelashes and count them.

We interlocked fingers. I pretended they were yours welding into mine.

Heard his voice. It sounded exactly like that drawl in yours.

I imagined it was you talking to me through the pillows,

Distilling my body.

In the morning, I felt my dehydration.

I reached over for an oasis, but found a desert.

Reached over for you, but felt him reaching over to me, instead,

Canopying me with his arms, trying to get me to join him in his slumber,

But I, I couldn’t sleep. 

I thought, how funny it is that often people say they fall asleep best when they’re next to their lovers.

But if I were with you, I don’t think we’d ever get much sleep.

Death

I am not afraid to die 

 I am afraid of the minute right before it

 That last remainder of consciousness

I wonder what I’ll think about in those last five seconds

 If my life will flash before my eyes in moving pictures

 or if I’ll laugh absurdly- finally reassured of assured sleep.

I am not afraid to die

I am afraid of the certainty.

My mother believes that as the dead leave they retrace all their steps

She says the day my grandfather died

She saw our kitchen lights flicker on and off fervently.

And I don’t need to go out swinging 

Or become the next shot heard ‘round the world

But I do want to feel like from somewhere

I could hear my own footsteps, bidding me their farewell.

I am not afraid to die

I am afraid of missing it.

And I know we never really know

When it’s our time to go

Because I’ve thought about it too often,

Come up with too many justifications,

And never left,

But I don’t know why given the choice

Between the blue pill and the red pill,

I’ve consistently gone with the latter.

I don’t know why I carry the truth

Or what I conceive the truth is,

On my chest,

As if it made me better

Because if death has confirmed one

Thing, is that I consistently keep 

Knowing less.

I guess what I’m trying to say is

I am afraid to die

I am afraid of all the things I will never know

And of all the things I will come to miss

I am afraid to die

I am afraid of everything.

The House Sparrow

The old man that stands outside of the Cuban Dry cleaners

On 48th and Hudson, and greets my mother and I sanguinely

As we walk home from school, has a little mischief in his smile today.

As we approach him, his grin gets wider, and wider.

I see that his hands are clasped and

As mysterious as his face.

“Hey Chiquita” 

He says in his Cuban accent,

Thick as a Media Noche,

“Look at what Ive got”

He opens his hands,

And reveals a tiny house sparrow,

Like the ones that clutter

My school’s back yard.

“Lo Quieres?”

My mother who is used to 

Giving into some, but most definitely not all of my caprices

For some reason says yes

And I walk home,

With the sparrow in my hands.

We give the sparrow a cardboard box, 

but our family friend, 

Hector let’s it fly around

Taking joy in watching the bird

Fly from box to post then wall paper

And defecate everywhere.

**

My mother that night finally coming into her senses,

Tells me to let the little house sparrow go,

That it is not happy,

And a four bedroom apartment is no home for a bird.

But I am not easily persuaded.

The sparrow is small, brown, cute

And besides 

I  want to take care of it.

The flying and defecating continues for almost a week.  

If my mother presses me, 

I pay it no mind .

But one afternoon, maybe on day six

I get a stomachache

One of those you only get

When you’re young and building

Up your defenses.

And I look over at the house sparrow,

The same way I looked over at him so many years later.

—-

When he chose to leave me,

I thought of the house sparrow that week

Fluttering its wings, desperate to get out.

And the way my stomach, so gaseous, hurt

I didn’t yet understand it’s pain,

But I knew I felt a version of it somewhere.

If you love something give it away

Well, I never loved him

Or the damn bird

But I do know pain,

And I think that’s enough

To let something go.

***

That evening,

As the sun started to set,

And my pain started to subside

I took the house sparrow into my hands,

Opened the kitchen window,

And unclasped.

I watched the house sparrow fly by to nearest tree full of other

Little sparrows,

And I closed the window.

Not looking back, 

Not expecting for him to come back.