As/Is







6.28.2004



Travis and I are brave, walking
pigeon-toed along the beams of
a railway bridge across a
shallow toxic river in Santa Cruz.

I should call it an "old
railway bridge' as bridges
are always described that way;
old.

But this one is of indeterminate
age, silent, it has nothing to
say the way all buildings and
bridges and forgotten serviceable
things remain

still; we were walking it for the first
time so it was young enough
to scare us

black water and beams half-
silvered peering between
our feet to see the sky above
below I like nights like that.
Inverted.

We didn't hold hands. We
squealed out our frustration
while night grew around us.
In the thick of it it was 2am
time

to make a little bonfire on the
irreducible beach
waves endlessly sucking at
the shore. Fire is better than
TV and we were dazed, cold,

better than the conversation around.
Words stuck

in the air

as I'm stuck now bent in half
on a couch that doesn't belong to
me
in a country that isn't my own,
waiting for this night to pack up
and leave me

as the last night, and Travis
did.