a taste of my long poem...Prayers from Catalonia

XVIII.

When the night opens its maw, I need a cigarette,

and my neighbors aren’t home or won’t answer their doors

so I walk to the corner bar where I can get a drink

and change for the cigarette machine. I thought about calling you

and I almost did, but the act of picking up my cell phone

turned the inside of me into a hollow temple, my heart

the abandoned deity, and I held the phone in my hands

for a long time palming it as if it were cold to the touch,

and I stood in the hallway outside my apartment door,

bent over to make my shadow longer, counting

the floor tiles covered in darkness, but I couldn’t dial.

I wouldn’t know what to say anyway, that it’s been months

and it still feels like I’ve been bulldozed and buried,

that I weep for the thick scent of your neck, to trace

the base of your thumb with my fingers, to peel

my damp body from yours after sleep one more time,

but there are too many days of dry wind between us,

the flood that swept the seed away, there is you

crossing the room like a picture sliding down the wall,

you pulling away from me, and my body folding

farther from you. I take my pack of cigarettes back to my apartment

and open the wide window so I can sit on the ledge and listen

to the fights of lovers echoing in the courtyard. We used to do this

when we first started dating and I had an apartment downtown

with a wide window like this one. We’d lie still against each other

in my small bed and listen to the cars passing and people stumbling

home, some laughing, some fighting, and I’d fall asleep

to the sound of your breathing and the moving street. Now,

I try to imagine you with another woman, your chest wet

with the sweat of her thighs, the impression of her mouth on your heart.