NatalieAlicia

the, airplanes are bright tonight.
up there in the, palpable height above our
comfy clutter where somewhere,
a long-legged girl perched on a sidewalk crack  
                                                                             slips
                                                                                     into
                                                                                            
obscurity.

tonight, in the sweet lull of motor hum an
carbon monoxide perfume,
a girl whose name you might suggest
                                                             is Alicia
                                                             or, maybe Natalie
        slams a cardoor with the grace of a queen,
                 lifting secondhand skirts clear  up  to  her  eyes,
                                                                         green,  like
                                                                         Kentucky grass,   
                                                                    like,
                                                                    switching traffic lights,  she
       has that look girls do,
       when they know their fortunes are turning.
tonight, Natalie – or, is it Alicia?   she,
                                                               smiles from across the plastic table
                                                               bolted to the floor that might be
                                                               mahogany,
                                                                by the way her hands rest on it.
her laugh says, “It’s not what you think,”
in the way girls do, when they’ve got a secret they want to tell.
      and, she says to me,   she,   says
“This time, I am in love.”
      tonight, the breath I expel from, somewhere visceral inside
                                                                 only   makes   her   smile,
in the way girls do,
                                when they know they are   way   above the world.

Alicia, her, lines describing a new
                   center of gravity in the smoky soup of 3 a.m.     slides
clear up and out of this reality,
                                                 leaving me, my lips thick with    “Natalie…”
swimming in the wake of her poignant existence.

she’ll be back next week, clearing a path along the empty street,
her heels lifting, long neck tilting in a punctuation of the night.

And she will sigh,
                     in the way girls do, when they know they are blooming.