in the ruin bar in Budapest
we talked about all the places it had gone wrong—
in Nebraska and North Carolina, these disjointed
legacies veering down into front-lawn funerals
for the people that we were. I sat, sober as a sin,
under the purple disco balls and the plant canopies,
the permanent marker on broken plaster and the
smeared greenhouse roof. not for the first time
I felt the broken hinges in my chest falling open,
amidst the shattered mirrors strung up like
origami cranes, while the fishnet lights draped
and the red neon pinned me to the periphery. there
is nothing quite so pitiable as the expatriate, sitting
in our willful exile lamenting all that had sent us
scrambling away in the first place. that I had
never been beautiful, never been sufficient, that I
had gone down screaming into my own inevitable
rejection on a date that no one even bothered to mark
on their calendar anymore. we recount old chapels;
we recount places we cannot return to. we speak
of photos and bridges and timelines burned,
we speak with a flippant bitterness and a certain
self-obsession. in the converted archaeology of the
war-century, apocalypse rises salient as the light,
and all of us lost darlings rattle like rats to linger
in the carved-out ribcage where purple houseplants
and paper flowers somehow still grow despite hostile
conditions, while all the ghost-bodied inhabitants murmur
our each and every earthly secret, spilling spirits
and charting silences like stars. all this decay
is its own kind of brightness, as I turn violet
in the corners, all cheekbone and abandonment,
still chasing down belonging in any color
I can salvage.