Alex Dimitrov

I opened the window so I could hear people. Last night we were together and by ourselves. You. You look and look at Diver for Crane by  Johns and want to say something. In the water you are a child without eyes. Yesterday there was nothing on the beach and no one knows where it came from. There’s a small animal lodged somewhere inside us. There are minutes of peace. Just the feel.   Just this once. Where does the past, where should the period go? What is under the earth followed them home. The branch broke. It broke by itself. It did break, James. We were there and on silent. We were delete, shift, command. Slow— in black — on an orange street sign. Missing everywhere and unwritten — suddenly — all at once. Him. He misses a person and he is still living. I haven’t missed you for long and you are so gone. Then he stepped away from the poem midsentence    . . . we must have been lonely people to say those things then. But there are rooms for us now and sculptures to look at. In the perfect field someone has left everything including themselves. You. You should stay here. It’s a brutal and beautiful autumn. With his hands in the sand, on the earth, under time he touched something else. People are mostly what they can’t keep and keeps them. And inside the circular cage of the Ferris wheel you saw the world. In the steam, on the mirror: you wrote so so so. . . so if   you’re looking for answers you’re looking at every water tower around here. Why does the sea hold what it loves most below? Fear. Hopeless money. All the news and the non-news. How could anyone anywhere know us? What did we make? And the leather of   your chair   . . .    it has me marked so good luck forgetting. The world was a home. It was cruel. It was true. It was not realistic. Make sure you date and sign here then save all the soft things. Because everyone wants to know when it was, how it happened — say something about it. How the night hail made imprints all over. Our things. Our charming and singular things.

And whenever they couldn’t speak they looked at each other. How long should I look at the world before I go home? It’s a moody life like Debussy on a weekend and all the appointments and money and drinks they do go. So with our beautiful coats we went back to that mess and what happened? Someone found what they wanted by night, by mistake. In the car it felt like summer and we lived with no sun    . . .    just metals and leather. A lot of   Mondays. A lot of you in the grass I go to and touch. Oh and Los Angeles for its slow light. Rome for when it gets late. You. Not you, but you who are reading   . . . what won’t you ask for and want? Of course I remember it differently because I was broke and it feels like I’m broke still. The cabs lined up but no one took him where he wanted to go. Those months shared a face and the face of a dog on a street was the only thing that really saw you (for a long time). Then I heard you were traveling, I heard you were somewhere, I heard you were nowhere anyone looked for at all. French stationery. Construction. Sent then deleted. Missed you so sorry next time press yes to continue press now. And I stood on Barrow then Greenwich then Allen then all streets, every street, all the time, everyone. There was a check you used just to drive out there. There was a storm that brought a gold door in front of their shoes. You know, it doesn’t get easier with the lights on. It doesn’t get easier to watch the play with an end. On the way out someone said, what a terrible way to portray life. But about us. Hide all week then some place we go empty the dark in. In the dark with our vices and best shirts and history’s dress. Then you could find me anytime. And then there’s right now. Where wouldn’t we go to be no one and those people again?

Born of the sun, we traveled a short while toward the sun. Where there were seasons and sky. Where there were monuments. Like a single engine plane in a July haze. Or our nights that pile up like shoes in a guest room. I would talk about the weather when I’m in the right weather but when. At the Stanhope Hotel, just hours before, they were people. The Navy divers found them lying under one hundred and sixteen feet of waves. Or a small body of water meeting a new, larger body. Healthy body. Nobody. We just couldn’t decide. Spatial disorientation occurs when you don’t refer to your 
instruments and begin to believe the whatever inside you. When I punished the Austrian roses by forgetting about them I knew that they couldn’t keep beauty and they couldn’t keep time. The day of his father’s funeral: November 25, 1963, was also his third birthday. Then — sometimes: the urge for new windows. A color other than black for the best days. In fourteen seconds plummeting at a rate beyond the safe maximum. The safe maximum at the office, bedroom, or bar. On the way there, somewhere between floors, no velocity could recover us. And again. Sometimes the right music, sometimes lucky to be in good light. Once a week I go into a room and pretend to have similar interests. Every day I wake up and brush to the left. We’re the good people, the bad people, and the people we aren’t. Socialite, journalist, lawyer. Americans. These Americans. They always button their coats when they see luck. Dear Johnny boy, thanks for asking me to be your mother but I’m afraid I could never do her justice. My eyebrows aren’t thick enough, for one.