people file out of the restaurant
like a funeral procession
along Sixth Avenue
as the wind bites
a little thing that stands out
from the hoards of coats
a woman stops
next to me
then moves away
I must hallucinate
that the sidewalks
are breeding
I think about you
sitting in your room
in Chicago
two years
and these thoughts
still drive me
to distraction
I’ve stopped trying
to define love
or differentiate it
from hunger
maybe it was just
that we had the same sadness
in our eyes
and both wept
behind the faces
we wore
in sleep
you clutched me
so tightly that night
and I didn’t know
how not to see it
and it comes to me now
as I watch
the funeral procession
of huddled regal forms
open and close
like sores
on the cement earth.