Adopt a Glance

Adopt a Glance


They bump into each other
Walking out of the circle k
Stepping onto tie gasoline-covered sidewalk
Into blackness
They disappear into one another
And I disappear into anyone who sees me

Night-time absorbs personalities
It absorbs the things we can’t touch
With our fingers
From people who walk in the depths of night
Flaws and happiness, tragedy and dreams

People walk, unsuspecting
(That guy with the Boston cap
He seeped into me, into my pores
I inhaled him through my mouth)

Not knowing that pieces of themselves
Fall from their body like confetti
Drizzle from their skin and absorb into the
Atmosphere, but it isn’t lost, it’s
Transplanted on the other side of the universe
Traded like saliva between lovers

Given to another lacking those very
Qualities, sentiments, experiences –
(I looked at a woman and knew what it was like
To be forty-five, to be a widow, to put on
Black fish-net stockings under custodial work pants because
That’s what he used to like)

It is the night, darkness that people fear
Lack of understanding feeds distrust
They are right to be weary –
Afraid to be shaken, woken to uncomfortable awareness,
Because in the blinding blackness people do lose
Pieces of themselves – but there is also
Great recompense

So that at the end of each life,
Especially at the end of a long and full life
He will leave himself – among beating hearts
Scattered like broken glass
Among people of different dirts
And he will ascend, made up of equal parts
By those still walking