I.
On Paris streets, Sargent tipped down his hat
for months after he painted
the strap back onto her shoulder.
And she went on standing
for what she is and what she wants
to be, her sharpened ivory
body sheathed in a black dress, the blade
of her nose turned aside—
the promise that you will see her
every time you get off the subway, and she
will not say she is sorry, she will not go back
to the country,
she will not hide the tender
neck that offends them.
You can hardly look
at her: long as a cigarette, deep
inside herself.
Some days here
are a gleaming red, and the coal hot sun
splits the street open, a song, a rush
of traffic that almost kills you.
You can hardly remember the sound,
like the clacking of gears but faster—
the sound that means the lightning
will soon crack
the suddenly fragile
sky like a slick teacup.
II.
You are forgetting someone.
It is dissipation—not a tide
going out—but a light passing through rain
only making itself felt
over one square mile. The only way out
was to make yourself air
that passed through the screendoor,
the bird everyone thought was trapped
in the woodstove and disappeared
from its belly during a storm
when the roads were flooded
and the blue world
was otherwise heavy and impossible
to navigate.
It doesn’t matter now
how he painted her,
or how she looked at him.
You are a minor wreck at dangerous depths.
And you know that no one ever comes back to you.