On W Catalpa Avenue

by Christine Byrne

I’m on the city sidewalk, perspiring stillness, practicing
how to tell you what happened
at your walkup I look around and can’t remember learning 
this street, that your front gate
is a fake front gate, lockless—
it’s fall 
& you’re in love with me
at least you love me sometimes
at least you’ve 
said it—
but I can be cold, I can mimic 
Connecticut, I have practiced how to gutter
the little kind things I think of when I watch you 
squinting—
I end up here, after, and I am ugly
what I’ve spat at & tried to rub away is still beneath my fingernails, fall
is an ordinary neighborhood
I can smell detergent and the streets are swept and cars park so close
their noses almost kiss
I’m cold 
& you are
blank looking, thin, with crazy bending wrists you should be 
home now, if I knock, you’re going to see it 
all over me, like the girl we saw last spring, when those boys 
took & smashed her violin, right there in the sun, 
how she packed up all the pieces, the splayed bow hairs 
pretending they were wings
you’ll be wanting to chase someone—
you’ll be doing it for yourself—again, anyway, I’m feeling odd
distance between pieces of my body
keep forgetting if I’m standing 
or sitting what part of me is touching
these pretty damp leaves—it’s so early
in morning, says no one—no one
you told me
gives each other their hands
in this country 
I don’t remember wanting you
in the beginning
kissing you twice, feeling nothing, until I was standing 
in the refrigerated aisle of the grocery store
holding unsalted butter
you were every stranger in there—
I think I’ve been trying to siphon brightness,
Think I’ve been laughing with the middle of the night
I’ve never lived
somewhere like West Catalpa Avenue
& I don’t know how to tell you
something bad
happened to me
because if you reach out to hold me—
turning to me the way you did once before falling 
asleep, saying I felt like the sidewalks 
of a beach town—
like you knew how I grew up before I told you, 
by the water, that I learned to measure 
by tide—
I don’t agree about hands in this country—
I see entire reaching strangers slinging grace across this bridge
I know what wanting can do to the body
& what bodies can do to other bodies
I feel your restlessness when I press 
my hands against your chest and try to rattle you
when I lay my head on you and wonder how your heart 
can beat so fast while you’re sleeping
that maybe you’re pretending it