Plum Juice is a Stain
on Your Character
by Julia Eng
your socks in shoes
which we both knew when we met
chestnut and royal blue
paint-tipped fingers picking tar-dipped flowers
who spill from the wilted and ashamed
roadside
by the statue of Columbus
which you hate
tick tick reel
elevators lug our noble bodies,
our nimble bodies to the
heavens
(known to us as the twenty-second,
where you stay)
the crate swamped with your soul and mine
and hers
is weeping, falling up
i like that we are silent so i can
think about how we breath
in the same rhythm
gleams of LEDs scream in interval
as my ears pop
softly up heaven,
up twenty two seconds
hiding games and split-checked meals
sickly hen feet with your Canal Street deals
and you
a slick-necked seal that I seem to lose
and lose
in a twisted cycle,
sisyphean wheel
I heard she lay softly
too deep on the floor next to your
shoes
(our) shoes
and the cardigan you bought at
Bergdorf’s last Friday when
you took me to see the
Kandinsky
on your sheets
she refuses to rise and
lies in a stubborn air
she lies open, a dirty
girly mag
open and glossy
the same stubbornness which I
had hoped to claim but
even when the sun hung under
the ledge and cried a glass river
she refuses still
you told me she stole the
flowers
(my) flowers
hid them in her room or tossed
them by the food truck
I shook my head but I am
burning up and fading with
street steam and graduate-mouthed smoke
you buy plum
juice this morning as if you
simply don’t
care
I am allowed just one sip