margin aubade, Spain

Two cats worming from the roadside

are a last hand squeezed around the wrist before we’re gone,

the path narrowed to a pencil line

and neither of us sure yet why we felt the need to leave

another place with a tree and a train track.

Something to do with the clench of unbroken clouds,

the beer cans strung along the fence, twitching like heckles.

We miss most mornings. We wouldn’t know what to do with them.

But last night it rained like a sack of nails

and beside you I dreamt through all the men who ever loved me.

They broke like waves over my mouth

and I couldn’t take a breath, or get my clothes back on the hanger.

berlin lit