NOSTALGIA #4: Venice (Day 12)

Photograph by Grace Spicer-Brown
Photograph by Grace Spicer-Brown

Only three in the restaurant and an azure lull

of men’s voices amid wooden slats. I asked for caffé

and was told the origins of names on street walls.

 

After landing, searching among faces that weren’t

yours, I found two coins thrown backwards

near the piazza intersection. There you were

 

in the hotel lobby, that gaze I couldn’t read, red-lips

filling the gaps between what you left out. We drank

Slivovitz. I remembered I would never see you again.

 
The rest is ablaze, and now I arch back into the red,

a sun before the sun, without a name, whose plunging

lands itself in my hands lain flat. Left over right,

 

forefinger and thumb into your cat’s eye glasses,

not knowing how to speak to a black veil. I asked

if it was possible to empty out a question completely

 

and was taught how to write it down. The weight of the

air split open the heat: I was told to eat more

and bought a copy of Moby Dick instead.