my vote went into the exhaust fumes on 16th and valencia, pressed hand on glass, cupped a see-through meditation, the way sadness leaves you overheated out on a cool night. wet. how close lament. how often do we wander our own streets. turn once this way on a corner, turn that and remain, in pockets. never leave this place. have no memory or have memory play. it resides in your house, somewhere beneath whatever it is you’re wearing, like sky I will never touch, but only fallow. falling. pursued.

how to tell of inkling, of booked rhythm, what follows me, or leads me past the colored electrics of closed shops, white lit men, balled-up palm trees, the lack of illumination in some buildings, the flat shoe wearers, the rift in anything seen here a declaration, or the way we assign definitions — home. city. skin. more alive in the waiting than in none of the above. in that fall of breaking and broke. in the soak commissioned. as if I knew anything or were anything or how I swear I’ll bend my knees when I get home just to see what it feels like, kissing the dusty floor for the taste of petals.

your hand touched my shoulder quickly, every shyness ignored or endorsed the way we once ran from somewhere with our hair still wet, before we knew better, before I noticed the length of your fingers, or any reason, of void, and season, and way.