Bullets over the grey ghetto
It’s still. Bugs are dying in the walls. The moon
is shroud in a clouded mourning and on the street,
a gun or firecracker blasts repeatedly, though
I prefer the latter.
Good things always get better
and, when we lay down together instead of eating dinner,
I counted the patterns on the orange curtains I brought you
from the other side of the world. There was a breeze.
You soon snored. Behind the window’s shadows, a new summer sun.
I took a mental photo of that moment so I can stare at it
every July, or high tide, or in the beginning
of every new life I try on. When it doesn’t fit,
I call you and cry, and the wind stops spinning,
and the free birds fly.