After the Bad Year I Want Things to Be Simple

So I fixate on the shapes we make on the glass: two 
stenciled cutouts against a fast-flashing scenery—
light streaks lashing a lake, another lake cindering through
a doily of dogwoods. In Beacon, the train slows down, the view 
settles into a quiet life: fishing boats cribbed
in the harbor, a wind-whacked American flag repeating itself 
on every other dock. Since Poughkeepsie
we have not said a word but we are eating Doritos 
and passing a bottle of Diet Coke back and forth,
metronomically almost, between us. Here, my name is inscribed 
next to your name on the ticket and I know
that we chose this ride, its quick-fire impressions
of cornfields, rickety bends—we put our money on it. This whole trip 
you’ve been typing away on your laptop, and not without reason:
October’s rent bounced and your mother, wakeful 
by a different ocean, forgets more and more
of her words. Still, why do I want you so badly to notice 
the branches scraping-not-scraping the window, harsh
but harmless like the hands of our best-meaning ghosts? Or the inlet 
committing itself to the Hudson, the Hudson prayerful
toward the Atlantic like saying Yes, I surrender
to your larger surge. I lick my fingers, glowing with orange dust.
A chemical shade of sunset. So often this year I craved nothing more 
than to be suspended entirely in the hour, perhaps like Monet
that day on the beach in Trouville; Camille’s gaze diverted, 
him reaching for blues straight from the tube to eternalize
the dark underside of his new wife’s parasol. Sand and traces of shells 
blow on the canvas, rapid white streaks for the Normandy light 
consummating her skirt. I look ahead. Our own city
inks into shape against a bruise-colored sky. The narrow space 
outside the restroom is a buzzing hive. The space between us
is me pretending to daydream, digging up slowly another Dorito. 
I’m all will and want. My tongue, unrepentantly orange.
I want you to look. I want you to see how I burn 
for every bit of this dust.

Read more from Issue 21.1.