Lisbon

We meet midway to walk white cobbles under a fish-flesh gray sky. Europe is collapsing; we are collapsing always and again no matter how hard we love one another. I don’t understand our failure, where the feed loops back and spits us into another country, another junior suite reenacting this same, same beat of   a scene that begins, rises, never ends,always ends — Our intentions don’t meet, their courses set differently by a force you don’t believe in, could be as simple as life. I want to be the wife you don’t want. You won’t let go of my wrist. I resist, threaten, bully, acquiesce. We write the next act of The Alchemist in New York, Lisbon, a beach, a bar, star-crossed maybe from different galaxies. You approach, I retreat. You retreat, I reproach. The manic two-step jitters over North Africa’s dunes farther than our hero, Santiago, can see. I rise in the night to find the sharp knife that came with the pears as a courtesy.