We have yet to exit

            The white lights glare sickly off the tiles plastering the station wall. I can almost make out my reflection in them. The crooked squares angle me into two-by-two sections. I crane my neck and watch the left half of my face push into other tiles. Imagine my brain rippling through the grout and snapping back into cubes.
            Impatience wrinkles through the air again, and everyone sighs. I turn and press my neck against the cool ceramic. We can all almost hear the squeak of sharpies against it, feel the smear of someone's spit over the lines to seal their handiwork. But we stood long enough not to care. Enough to think, without really attending to our thoughts. The spit would have been rushed along too. Just make sure the marker sticks and find another blank space.
            Across the platform an ad proclaims WHAT IF SEEING EACH OTHER AGAIN CHANGED EVERYTHING? I want to stuff it in my purse to think about later. In different lighting.
            Impatience demands attention when it's finally outrun you. The muffled weight-shifts of backpacks crawls into my ears, the clack of hard-soled shoes. It is momentarily compact and clean. Surrounded and squared off, bodies push through bodies like open air.

Static Apparatus

Architects climb the vertical lines with grace
to draw across my worries, silver and black
beams between their fingertips.
Their trapeze costumes match their pencils,
pointed and dropping into skyscraper masses,
blending with their work as the movement
dissolves. I can't decide if here, in this beautiful city,
I am pleased or I am panicked. If I am alone
in this stairwell, or if I know this address
too well to give directions for "away again".
Who hired the architects to bridge the gaps
of each 3 AM nightmare? I paid for the metal
they bend with their teeth.

Untying Stillness

Our voices crack along the edges,
where they run together and then quickly
fall away. Dust on our shoulders
echoes "I love you" and we brush
our fingers in our silver words.
In all the days our silence ran over
our lips, catching a lisp and a laugh,
we built up a resistance to keeping
our arenose vows to ourselves, alone.
Mine and yours and the space of ours
cresting in the place between our lungs.
I've never loved the dust swept into sun
as much as I do when we swell the air.