He’s half-awake

and half-asking again,

the question I can’t answer.

 

The words getting stuck in a cortex,

lost in some hemisphere.

 

I don’t know what it was

that drifted between us

when our knees touched

beneath the table

that afternoon in midtown,

 

or why it was his voice I wanted

on the quiet train ride

from Pisa to Florence,

 

or how an overexposed photograph

of his sunburnt cheeks

and my crooked bottom teeth

could be so dense with love.

 

I don’t know what it was

that made me reply yes that night,

under the jagged moonlight

with a sincere and eager heart.

 

I only know

its nature was to flee,

 

and it fled.