fossil park

the sunset hit an angle outside  
a two-story window, painting  
cream-colored apartments  
ochre, the shumard oak swayed goodbye  
to a chapter closed  
 
and i live again  
 
the mile loop that girds the lake  
next to the junior baseball field  
at fossil park  
 
beyond the parking lot—  
always empty,  
except for that fire truck  
(why was it parked behind the station  
again?)—  
 
past the public library david  
called us to,  
between  
its  
bookshelves  
and through  
 
the empty conference room  
 
with its window  
in the back overlooking  
the parched ditch breeding  
scutch grass and reeds,  
tall enough to peek up above the event horizon  
at passersby, that  
i fell  
into  
on the next night there  
 
and you, laughing,  
but brow furrowed  
into  
ditches, crossed the bridge  
to meet me on the other side  
 
near that water fountain—  
the one a person had to kiss  
to drink from because  
it never  
arced  
its stream  
high enough  
(and, fuck, were we thirsty)—  
 
adjoining a modern pavilion  
with its pavement and grill  
beside a campground of half-cut logs  
stacked row on row around  
a fireplace that we joked  
no one ever kindled—  
the foil of then and now—  
 
next to the picnic table facing the palm,  
where i said i'd paid attention as you invested  
a half hour explaining der-die-das  
while i stole glances tracing  
the cheek moles dancing on your face  
when you chortled and me the troglodyte  
could only write ich habe ein Feuer gemacht.  
 
here, outside this window,  
the wind brushed green  
leaves from the trees  
in verdant heaps on  
yellow parking space  
 
dividers  
 
here, before this window,  
i dressed myself a person groomed  
in dirty laundry  
and breathed in deep  
just  
to feel  
 
my lungs expand wider than  
the time you rode me like a mule  
in prague, and the wind swept  
static breaths from  
out  
my  
throat,  
stripping its way between  
narrow alleys no further  
than two cobblestones  
apart,  
 
and later spurred me, starving, up to  
schynige platte above  
the tree line  
past the mushroom huts  
resting in sullied snow,  
 
into the belly of a cloud  
out of eyeshot of the railway  
 
onto a rocky slab,  
legs  
splayed,  
you fashioned yourself  
a meal for me to inhale  
 
the wind whistled a story  
once upon my ear  
behind  
your icy knees, and fins  
beneath  
your nape  
 
so how could i  
gripping you like a postcard  
i'd picked out for myself  
but must address elsewhere  
 
your lucent scent  
of sweat and lilacs  
wading to my nose  
 
say that, even then,  
the water was rising  
at my feet—  
 
there was just no time  
 
that it was at my thighs a year and half later  
when we stole wafer cones from the cafeteria  
hid them under our shirts as we walked out,  
the corners of your mouth  
peeking out from forced deadpanness,  
strolled past deuxieme maison  
to the retention pond  
to feed muscovy ducks  
 
or to string out my wilting synapses,  
bated for the lilt of your laugh  
pretending to grin  
while hours tinted the silence  
invisible like water to fish  
under cover of night—  
 
there wasn't enough time  
 
left to loop back around,  
even now, along the unpaved  
trail  
 
next to the metal bars where  
i kissed you upside-down  
with trembling lips  
 
in the dark,  
past the bench where  
you put words in my mouth  
and me in yours  
 
through the mosquito field  
by the water fountains  
adjoining the pavilion  
beside the picnic table  
 
across the bridge and  
onto the asphalt,  
 
to pull the binding taut  
and shut the cover  
closed for  
good.