I have not seen
the parts you save
for your more devoted guests.
But you showed me
your concrete slab of a back-end,
and trusted me
with your hurried outskirts.
I have not spent more
than a fraction of a day
on the fringe of you,
but I have caught
your newborn sunrise
in the corner of my eye.
I had only a few spare hours
tucked into my suitcase,
but I spent them all at a window
watching you dress yourself,
and press yourself
into a skyline that could impress
while I lingered
among your cast-off motels.
I have seen
the red-eyed wanderers
that you spit across borders
with tumbleweed hair
and not enough toothpaste
in their carry-on.
We carry on
like old friends
for the length of a gate’s line,
until I am watching you shrink beneath me
into matchbox cars
and patchwork squares of grass.
I tell myself you cities all look the same
from the upside of the clouds.
I tell myself there’s no point
in wandering my way through you now.
Like how kissing someone
who has read all your poems
would only be redundant.
But we both know
in the deep of us
how I long
to spread your sky over me
to press my feet against
the soft of your streets.
And what else is there to say
now that I’ve stopped lying
to the both of us?
What else is there to do,
but watch you shrink beneath me,
and wash across my window
in waves of unmet scraps of land,
all flowing into a wistful farewell?
