As It Is In Heaven

I spend all my money in Mexico

on plates of ceviche that arrive like gifts,

juicy and cold.

Diamonds for my best friend,

mysterious fruit soaked in liqueur.

Dancing alone, then together,

Cakes shaped like bodies,

Radiance like linen dumped on water,

Box braids that mean vacation,

Rosacea on top of sunlight and mimosas.

There is a lizard in the room,

one of us will have to go out the window into the late August sun.

Not to be in love with you,

it must have been lousy.

When you return,

I give myself something my heart wants.

Like everything else,

getting filled up by it,

being emptied of it,

over and over again,

until we’re exhausted like two swimmers.

Every once in a while a mosquito bites me to remind me I am not in heaven yet.

Yes, vacation ends like a rope.

•

Back in New York

I wake up very early and it’s raining, so I open a window and sit

on the edge of the bed.

Louis asks me if something happened in Mexico.

I say, of course, a lot of things happened!

and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Louis is quiet and still like a statue,

The flight was through clouds and rough.

6:45AM, the alarm rings disastrously,

and together, we avoid it.

It is cruel going back to a door cut so small,

but I see the door, I know the wall,

and would get there if I could.

I am walking backwards, stumbling, sitting down, hard on the floor,

shrinking until I fit through,

and the boots step on amazingly outside these paper thin apartment walls.

Vague skies, no radiance, the tedium up there,

My last chance at happiness.