Philadelphia

In Philadelphia, I wait out the last of summer. Everything goes slowly,
like a birth. Along the womb of the Schuylkill, I recite the names of sculptors

who worshiped permanence. The river is swollen like a scab, and you say
every river is new each time you see it, just like our breaths, dense with promise

between seasons, and just like people. It’s September, and the morning is
serrated against our fingers, carving us into the spine of a new city. We debate

whether memory is like marble or like water, then whether we would rather die
from love or from hatred. Meanwhile, ginkgo dresses crosswalks in autumn.

The present takes shape like a clay dove, a resemblance of flight, indented
with fingerprints and some words you don’t mean. I write of time as wind,

weathering bodies into myths, shaping myths into sculptures. I write of the wind
and of us, just a breath against it. Philadelphia, like an artifact, stands still

for museum-goers and marathon runners, distorted only in reflection
along the belly of its river. And winter, soft as wings, runs quickly into the ocean.

I remember a past self, who remembers a past self, who remembers a past self.
Somewhere, sometime, against the contour of running water. Rodin, Bernini, Brancusi.

It’s April, and the morning holds me like a mother. Then, it’s summer again.