I was actually at the thing nobody wanted to be at.
Taking pics with Asher there like I needed somebody to know.
As if my dealer were the whole globe to me reading her poems like it was just me there on this rooftop but all the while in my periphery was a monogamous mosaic blur that pursed my lips into a neutral non-expressive smile moving my face not even a little and still it became most of what I could focus on but never really see.
What I came to then and there was a conclusion about poetry that you could never understand.
Over the tent of light pollution I peer reviewed at the nearly no stars barely visible while not thinking anything or even able to feel time when I noticed the reading how oh my god it just would not stop.
It just never ends.
They wont stop it just keeps going.
I hate it here.
These nonfiction writers in their all black reading in their perverse monotone voices I can’t stand them. I don’t even care if what they’re saying is true I could never agree. This was actually real life here on the roof of Lubov observing Asher descend the stairwell to get Charley’s blazer back while the person with me was elsewhere and others reclined against the embankment ignoring the weight of our life but this is it while most people refuse to see.
It only took Asher a minute and a look from a Canadian to start pleading to me Trudeau’s case about his past attire choices and without missing a beat we both started acting like who could ever say a word to the man at all.
Then I glance over at Asher like, You’re so dramatic but it didn’t change the truth that whatever had been standing there between me and him was still there meaning the globe to him but no one else realized or cared.
I just shake my head and involuntarily check my pocket for a chance to live too.
Wishin wishin they wishin on me, I drakely recite and think how temporary and miraculous this all is and look to the mostly just waning moon above us where the other luminaries reflect off my screen just to witness you forever typing that message and all of us aligned waiting to be pushed into my eyes a text not even a word but just your name in my notifications. I turn to that 5G tower in the foreground of One World Trade Center like, Please please just let me see.
But your ellipses just continue to twist their liquid crystal display and eclipse me.
Those three dots appearing then disappearing,… waiting for you to just stop and send.
Maybe for it to only be a simple phrase or passing remark that would be so beautiful to me.
One word could change this life forever.
Just a string of letters as a text with a way to leave.
Over the edge of the rooftop awning and along the roadside median the crabgrass goes rough where two maybe three fireflies performatively gesture like they thought someone should tell me but what I just don’t know.
I grab my bag out the puddle where the same pollen has fallen all on a car and into water runoff or nearly standing on the rims of filled things there where I start to head and think how those three words after fallen sound just like your name. I jump down the last few steps of the building stairwell my bag swings over my clavicle and splashes a wet impression on the entryway bulletin board. My shoulder trajectories into the pony wall of the foyer and then I land on my thigh when it feels a buzz and chime from you. There was fallen again before you but this time in real life.
I try unlocking my phone but drop to a knee without a ring.
How I just oh so badly need this text to do something to me.
I had just seen Coco and I needed to see if it was true.
If skeletons were real. If guitars were real.
I went to Mexico because I had to know.
Theo Thimo is an Albanian-American poet. Their novella Trauma In Metro (2019) is available through Amygdala Press. Their newest book Simp is forthcoming on Test Pie Press.