When we walk at night with the ghosts of New York,
we float above grates and glass;
we have hit our heads on concrete before—
we have jumped from buildings, sank.

We spent a year wrapped in blankets,
emerged drunk, slightly shrunken;
we had films for expression, books for quotations,
but no banners for our own procession.

Map-inches away, we settle into our lives—
separate, less comic, too lost, less known.
The tea smells better in Omaha—
the mundane, better in New York.

Thin like a flower’s shadow,
aproned and sipping stolen cups of red,
you cook and create
create mold and shape
the glimmer in your hands.
And I watch, overcome.