ii. new apartment

it’s a cold sunday afternoon and we’re

sitting on our new crumbling parisian

balcony that looks out to sea, nursing

paper cups of dishwater gray tea

because we haven’t unpacked the box

with the twin mugs yet. she’s not crying but

i let her clutch the front of my favorite burgundy

cardigan just in case. what happened? i ask,

and it’s the third time this month. it’s easier

now not to sob my lungs out with her. i half-

listen to her wailing over the last coffee shop

ex who grows daffodils in the back of his chevy

and breaks her heart all the time and half-muse

if the seagulls here, circling above the distant

waves, will wake us too early in the mornings

with their harrowing cries of hunger. it’s an inane

worry. i watch the way the rasping autumn-come-winter

wind tousles her hair and assure myself that this recent

freedom is real, real, not a fallacy disparaged into

normalcy, and then the seagull problem doesn’t even

seem that stupid after all. i trace the rim of my cup

with a thumb; the tea has gone sickeningly cold.

by now we’re two shivering silhouettes against the

dying light. when are you gonna start seeing someone

again? she says, so sudden i almost don’t catch it.

she still thinks broken things can be fixed, then.

i look away toward the bruise-purple sunset. not

going to cry anymore? i ask instead of answering,

and she kicks me in the ankle. shaddup and

answer the question! so i pull her close and hope

the darkness doesn’t swallow us whole. oh,

sweetheart, i sigh, the chances of that.

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