Reunion
Morning clocks in and the ancient white of Venice
dresses into day. I put on the Fugees in a damp church
with Madonnas swelling, welled in humidity,
and I still have nausea from the plane
where I took up a whole row and stared
at the seatbelt sign glowing, imagining the underbelly
of the bird, coated in a buttery trans-Atlantic moon.
I haven’t seen you in a year and now, when I do,
I get jumpy, make us stop into church after church
as we watch the green water churn against stone.
Venice has no streetwear, I say, everyone here looks
like a widow. It always looks like a Sunday.
Really, I’m being defensive about dressing
like an American so I stick hard to stereotypes.
When we get to your apartment, you wash tomatoes,
water rushing on your hands, directly into the sink.
You spit a small harmless seed as we sit on stools
in the lime kitchen and eat them whole. Plum bodies
so fragrant, they make me cry and here I am,
tearing over tomatoes, jetlagged, lagging, delaying
everything, with at least three churches in view.
We’re surrounded by time and god.
It makes children of all of us.
And I am not a stupid child.
Before I left, I gathered my breath and for what?
Some grand gesture. No. We keep our heads down.
We study the feet of medieval saints. We make small talk
against the big year of our absence from each other.
