she is waiting at an inner-city line
the bus pulls up blood-red, it is weeping
corpses
the bodies are old personas, old dissected
diagrams of the same girl:
she is ambition, desperation, romanticism.
but now—
she is washing and washing her hands
trying not
to be something she is not,
trying to find the small place
between city buildings
where the world is stopped
and her head
is also stopped:
they call it social distancing,
she calls it a typical saturday night.
there is an empty seat
between the bodies—
the universe is at home, but
she sits with her feet
flat on the floor, choking
on old horizon lines,
scratching what-ifs
in public glass: I want
to be kind
to write something beautiful,
to not always sluice
my sum
from my parts.
the last pavilion 