Eating the Scraps of Dawn

You take off your powder
and come to know me
as I am,
stairs into water and the sun
in your eyes.

Among all the criers you comfort me most.
You are the only one who takes me as a madman,
who understands that my throat
thinks for me.

October sidles up. We’ve been eating phantom money.
And you? Wet haired in your bed.
And you? Smoking in the snow.
We’ve been up this mountain before, bleeding,
thank you for asking.

Still I like the buildings and I still hope
to make a friend from the encounter
before the sky does.
I age much. It must seem
that I like to look over my shoulder.
I’m not so indiscriminate as all that.