Murk
by Maria Cangro
Another rainy Saturday in September and wet
leaves stick to the sidewalks like bandages
on fresh wounds. The sky is sickly pale. I wear
my long blue coat for the first time this season
and on the lower level of the Verrazano,
I debate whether the whole thing will collapse.
I morph the ordinary into these morbid games
like it’s nothing. My friends laugh and call it
my anxiety because they can’t conceive
of a creature who craves its own annihilation.
I don’t remember what it feels like to crave
anything carnal since moving to New York,
where touch is not amorous or delayed:
sitting on the subway, a stranger’s thigh
against mine. I don’t even crave food anymore.
In a window on the Upper East Side, a cat
casts its gaze. Downward. Away from the mist
so thick it dwarfs even this empire of a skyline.
I smoke, under the silver awning of a French
bakery, a Virginia Slim, and pretend this makes
me elegant, as the moon thaws, tapered.