Sitting at Vivace
One unsweetened ice tea
One cheese croissant
Bikes with goat-horn handlebars
Men in white hats and orange vests hanging from scaffolds
Marble tabletops veined like a smoker’s lung
Nose-rings and jean skirts
The din of conversation
The drone of the low bass
The hiss of the milk-steamers

two cats in a zoo

417 nesting pairs (+1), alone without a chaperone
“You shouldn’t read this. It’ll make you cry.”

Another cat tears meat from a bone;
Blood in her smile, she licks the tears away.

blood pours from
the keyhole in my forehead,
as she inserts the key.

the name of someone so close
comes off the lips like a foreign word

The steely smell of my fingertips
The sheets of gray sky
The snot lodged in my nose
The stacks of dirty laundry

Are not impressed by my good looks
and charming personality

“Your eyes look weird,
like you haven’t been sleeping,
or like you’ve been asleep for a long time.”

I think of her lily scented skin
Wine tastes like butterscotch and cotton candy
My fingers smudge the glass

her soft skin
stops my breath