I belong to you.

When you realize a pen can only touch so many pages before it runs out, remember. I belong to you. Just like it, I’ll touch and stay before I go but I’ll touch longer. I’ll speak to you like my words are no language without your ears. Like they belong to you, like I belong to them. 

When your school bus driver complains to you about always being on the road but never toward the right destination, tell him my love can relate to this

and then tell him that’s probably why I belong to you and him 

and to the girl who laughs loud enough just to hear herself laughing, and to the grandmother who always seems to prefer sobbing over tearing,

I always try to tell them,

I belong to them like I belong to all the breaths under the river

and to all the dead souls trying to break free of their ghosts just to touch us

and to all the dark alleys trying to make the passers-by

belong to them, I belong to them like I belong to you. 

There’s a blind man who plays his saxophone underground in London. He only hears the touch of coins against his case

and the thousands of people hurrying to the tube he can almost see them

more than they see him as they give him their coins,

and there’s a guitar man in New York City who stomps his feet as he strums,

we always smile as we leave him by Penn station.

He belongs to the stomps and strums so much he doesn’t even smile back.

So we smile more, and can’t tell where we are because it’s so familiar, like many other places

Warren Street Station Mile End Road Kingscross Manhasset

so we start belonging to low rooftops, scarred walls, loud footsteps, and wordless music stations,

to the feeling of seeing something for the first time that you've already seen before on an aging face,  in eyes covered by black sunglasses, and dimples hidden by wrinkles that you still can see because the grin is just too wide.

So I start belonging to you , to them,  to myself to this little girl Salma who has too many big sisters

that are not her own, including me. She tells me what her father did as he left her, what her brother did as he left her,

and when I ask her about her favorite people in the world she asks, can my father and brother both be #1 ?

so I belong to her more. I teach her to learn from the sun, how it exhales loudest before it sets to sleep

and I teach her to learn from the last page that absorbs all it can from the pen that’s going to run out on any next word

and I show her what guitars and problems have in common, how you can’t make music out of either one until your fingertips are callous enough

and she teaches me how to belong,

she teaches me how to belong

same way I’m trying to teach you, so belong to me, to all the rooftop drinkers, tree top climbers, basement poets, and to everything they belong to.

So when you’re walking through a dark alley tonight don’t reach the end of it,

and when your love is everywhere, when it’s always on the road but never in the right direction, don’t tell it to find home,

and when you visit your grandmother tomorrow do not ask her to stop sobbing,

and when you think of ghosts think of the souls waiting to break free of them just to touch you 

There are too many lost selves that look just like mine so it’s harder to find myself today.

I’ll just let my lost self dance to having never been found, to always being on the verge

of living, and then I’ll leave it behind, follow my footsteps wherever they take me.

I have come to realize it is okay to be saved by things, not people, so that’s where my body heads most times, 

I find myself learning from trees - it’s okay to lose my most colorful self only to a cold world - 

and learning from poetry, always making beauty out of overused words,

I let my self be overused while it’s lost so I can claim it back

like fetching for your smile in frames that can only show it in that particular second 

I look at the mouth printed on your face always captured two seconds too short of an Arya smile 

it makes me feel like talking to your sister for the first time without you 

like wondering what it will make me feel eating horseradish sauce without you convincing me to try it, 

eating kebab without you ordering it,

it makes me feel like realizing loss will never be experienced without familiarity 

it makes me feel like it made me feel when I first started fetching for you in this new world

where the closest it gets to holding your hand is playing Settlers with blue settlements because they were your color 

where the realest it gets to hearing your voice is hearing it digitized 

where the only way to directly talk to you is through your Facebook wall 

and the only way to hear your response is listening to a 90s song on your station 

it’s like looking for you in a you-less world that is still full of you 

so I watch the sun rise every morning, listen more closely to radio stations, wait for dandelions to open up a second time, just in case you’re sending the peace you found wherever you are

it feels like consoling myself  by consoling others at funerals

which makes me feel like waiting to go back a stranger in the home that lost you 

a home like the house we were in

where someone else will be,  not knowing of the nights you lay awake in the same bed thinking private thoughts kept private 

You rained. Your wind found a way to slap me in the face or hands at least once every night showing me what numbness can teach about touch 

even in June. Your tubes showed me the shortest distance between two people, your cranes taught me there really is no sky that is wide enough but maybe that’s beside the point 

what I’m trying to say is that I found life through you and death through you but you taught me that death only strengthens love the way love weakens death 

you taught me that the best homes are made when relentless with the broken bases so I made home through the broken bases I found in you 

so people believe ugly tomorrows can still birth days like today,

it’s a beautiful day so lovers no longer need to kiss, people write poems in their heads without worrying  to get them down on paper, the blind touch not out of need to see, just to feel,

and like dandelions every one grows more transparent,

it’s a beautiful day when squirrels make homes out of bird nests, when ducks for once can sleep with both eyes closed, when peacocks shake a little more before they mate

and swans walk on water to chase what they want but glide on right after they do not get it

It is a beautiful day

so death brings people closer to life, the rain helps magpies see themselves once more, people

see themselves once more in the eyes of those they hate hating them less,

people are not quiet, not out of words or reflective, they are just in silence.

It is a beautiful day

so I hold you closer by letting you go

Everyone talks to himself or analyzes the rain in this city of long nights and angry clouds’ rain

Promises are for liars who lie about change, but maybe you forgot there’s change in that constant rain 

Leave her now when anything can be washed by streets of rain

She will cry with your children and never eat eggs but she’ll learn from a heartstrain

It’s true her fingers drizzle and clean you but aren’t you tired of too much rain?

What if I love her tomorrow? Get up and leave, the heart is just a crybrain

Hear the crashing cars and naked trees: love is as conditional as the rhythm of rain

Sleeping With Others

Because memory and its intrusive nostalgias lie down with us, it helps to say we love each other,

each declaration a small erasure, the past for a while reduced to a trace, the heart’s palimpsest to a murmur.

Still, our solitudes are so populated that sometimes after sex we know it’s best to be quiet -

time having instructed us in the art of the unspoken, or in the sufficient eloquence

of certain sighs. Regret shows up unpredictably, sleeping with, but never between us.

Like joy it doesn’t stay long, quickly tiring of the language used in its name, wanting only itself.

We’ve made this bed. We’re old enough to know sorrow may visit now and then, and that the world slides in

Sometimes I try to imagine the ways the ground is getting to know you

I try to imagine the way the sand grains seep through your casket just to get to know your hands, your small hands,

and learn their story. I try to imagine the ways the ground will get to know you, just how tightly it will hold you away from anyone’s footsteps, 

how tightly it will hold you still, resisting the breeze when it tries to teach the sand 

the art of moving on. And when it’s time for you to leave, to get to know what’s behind the sun, what clouds hold besides water,

what lies in spaces skies cant reach, just when it’s time for you to leave the ground, I wonder how it will let you slip away