After the show, we sit crosslegged in the theatre and smoke long thin cigarettes

and watch the smoke drift among the rafters, the tattered red velvet of the curtains

outside in the street, wrapped up in the bones of the evening, we walk linked arm in arm

and watch the twilight bodies of streetwalkers blend and shimmer in the lights beneath the fat yellow moon

I show you the only constellation I know (orion’s belt, fresh in the sky, lined up like ducks in a row to be picked at)

and watching you laugh at my attempt to impress you is like watching a sculpture be carved

and all I want is to recreate rodin’s kiss or seward johnson’s surrender

but you hate him almost half as much as you hate your first boyfriend

so I try not to think of either and instead make some remark on the weather, on the film, on the stillness two bodies take on when they are pressed together by the weight of hesitation

here is the crux of our mornings and evenings and afternoons

three dollars fifty for a dirty mug of coffee at the diner booth

and you devouring your 3 am eggs and sausage like you were in coney island for a hot dog contest

l’olympia of the small hours, reclining across the booth with your face and breath pressed against the glass of the storefront

you, right now, with three bites of breakfast sandwich somewhere behind your teeth and beneath your tongue

I have never loved someone so much as I love you now, except for maybe the girl who sat next to me in english class in the third grade, and rose from titanic

and besides one of them isn’t even real, and neither of them is in front of me eating a breakfast sandwich right now, which is certainly a vote in your favor

shit, I haven’t been so unsure of something since my father first tried to explain to me how to fill out tax returns

and I am worried about what we will do when we are apart, wasted and wretched in separate cities

and what if I can’t love you well enough to convince you to stay, or you fall in love with the german boy from work who is always making eyes at you at lunch break

and how will we decide how to split up holidays and who will we invite to the wedding if a wedding is what you want because I am a forward thinking man and am totally fine with living without labels if you want but also the instability of not being labeled is a little frightening

and the fact that neither of us speaks russian is certainly a cause for concern, because if the russians invade our survivability will be at an all time low

and neither of us is particularly tall, which certainly won’t help out any children we might have (if you want any, if we can agree on how many to have, can we agree on how to raise them? what sports or instruments or languages do we want to teach them (russian??)

and now that we’ve both spent all our money, who will pay for the taxi home?