Perhaps we are forever crossing over each other’s
paths, never meeting, always circling, winding
around an impossible question. Here a trace scent,
some mark of you that refuses to fade, even when
the world has gone cold, a luminescent line,
a final word, my heart teetering at the chasm’s edge.
What sign would do? How would we know? Will crows
start from their trees, shotgun scatter across the blind-
wheeling sky? Will you be standing at some corner,
beneath the broken lights, flickering, dressed in
ill-matched sorrows? Tell me, because this heart fills
with shadow and machine, because I do not believe
in perfect symmetry or the accident of beauty. Even now,
light dismantles the world, sets each empty space aflame.
Even now, an orange is being thrown high above the city streets.
A red scarf blazes against snow.