Big City

He promises a canary dress, white gloves, says they’ll eat chops, thick as her thighs, that they’ll order doubles of the “finest,” see all the Big Names when they arrive. But it’s the thought of them dead: half of what they own draped around them, her head against his chest, his back slack against the headboard, all their letters unopened, bills not paid, long knocks, the notices tacked outside their door. It’s not knowing whether some smell would introduce them to their neighbors or a landlord wheeling them out into the hallway; the highboy he chipped on the drive up, the silver she inherited from her mother, her hatboxes, stacked high next to them like a wedding cake waiting to be buried. He heard that “up there” the wind had talons sharp enough to hook a grown man beneath his collarbone and carry him a full city block. He heard that you learned the months by measuring the length of their shadows and even summer was like a quality of night.