All these details will
soon become relevant,
I promise – the snowflakes
collecting in cracks, all
those powderkeg wants
and worries, the
million myriad paths I’ve
carved into concrete toward
coffee, rereading the
old verses ’til they
are sacrosanct.
I hate it when you
stammer long story short, tell
it long, walk me through
the crowded alley of mind
and memory, the way the
edges blur, colors run,
meaning resurrected from
the moments that fell
through our clenched fists,
unwieldy ritual, this
clumsy communion.
My cat chooses my
lap, palms wandering his
orange fur as I contemplate
the day he will be a story
I tell, crack open my laptop
and wonder why
somebody would film porn
without taking off
his Apple Watch, and
the plant trembles near
the window, does it
remember New York?
Unfinished business, a
concept I can’t tether to
a single story, the lack
of resolution its own
resolution, and yet
I remember the summer
we picked those old scabs
together, recall the way
everything is happenstance
’til it’s over, nothing more
human than to hope
it will have mattered, after all,
hands frenetic, rearranging
it so.
michael king 