Application for Memory

Not one, but two
fog horns sound for me, and no one else
in the middle of the mustard lit waters out there.
I haven't had the feeling of walking, running, striving or stumbling home
with the thought that I was pulled and taken and belonged
to the place I needed to return to.
I haven't followed anyone down a dark dirt road with no street lights
in some time,
hand in hand in the dark but what's the point in the dark
when you can be in a car, rain beating on your skull from up and around you.
Streaks of dull thunder sounding you and creating a pathway,
not like those times when I followed you into the water.
The water that belonged to us, but all I remember
is the white moon thick and high up,
the cold water which seemed particularly wet to my clothes and feet
you grabbing me up onto the wooden plank, where we walked the pirate ship
the reverse way,
smelling like dirty country water and no one in sight.
That road, the one I haven't been down in some time,
since before I learned I could find my way home without dramatics
or planned out tactics
or houses I needed to rebuild in the king's honor,
one miscalculated plank at a time, from the ground floor up.
Still, I stare out the lighted subway car, into the darkness that is
dirty, rancid and never completely black,
into the lighted telephone of a woman who doesn't feel me standing against her,
gently so, not with malice or weight,
swiping inspirational phrase after inspiration phrase
across her expensive phone.
The origin - philosophy, guru, religion or otherwise
is unbeknownst to me, but
I exhale, and cannot take the length and breadth of her quiet desperation
because it is my own, and I close my eyes
and think how fucking good the soles of my wet feet felt, in the summer night
after we fucked in the lake at the end of the street,
walking back under warm, black starry sky
over charcoal gravel that felt soft and elaborate
level and charming, like him following me with desire in his eyes-
her spring morning is my summer night in a different plane of shadow,
she notices my presence and is threatened as we both exit the train,
and we part like that, in the steps of collective memories.
I smell the water and wind as I climb the subway stairs and
feel his steps still close behind me.

M. Lucia