The sun can’t reach us this morning. Instead, sour
stone, exhaust, roof tar creeps over the windowsill.
You unlock an arm from my chest, roll the hour
into blanket and sheet, my body a shadowed still
exposed on the hardwood floor, unlike the shades
nestled in book covers, sofa pillows, the crease
of your bent knees. I rise. My silhouette trades
floor for parted window. I shut it, notice grease
stains on the opposite brick walls, a perfect grid
quickening into squares and rectangles, the glass
reflecting oily glass. The air quivers, girders hid
by pigeons as they roost, this vent a bird class-
room, observation deck, human television, a fish
bowl of digestion, repose, adhesion. I turn, strain
my neck to see a glimpse of eggshell in a blue dish
how fire escape utensils cut precise pieces, rain
gutter a pillar in this vaulted kitchen, trompe l’œil
breakfast ceiling. Sun strokes a rusty water tank,
a peaked cone, a red pipe cap, and you stir, loyal
friend, as if the sun broken above us, on the rank
rooftops of tiny, overpriced apartments, broke
only for us, the feeling heady, like funhouse
mirrors : distorted reflections, the convex spoke
and concave joke of Manhattan. Sun, douse
us with your indiscriminate light, touch plastic
crates in the alley, touch dumpster, access door
loading dock, moss and cigarettes, our drastic
love in Amy and Jonah’s apartment. I moor
myself in your bay, carry this anchor into day
a cold November Sunday, where, in short hours
on Columbus, Amy and I will clear the way
for you and Jonah, knuckles the color of flour
as you carry his bartered bookcase from the flea
market to their stoop that spills out onto Broad-
way’s surges at the corner of West 69th. Chelsea
to Harlem, Murray Hill to Morningside, sun prods
us into each other, our bodies an X on the city;
joints creak and pop, wrist and ankle reach for you,
sun, the way I reach for you, Brian, for your witty
line, like ants carrying leaves back to their mound, too
tired to care if your hand strayed also to mine
there in front of the Lincoln Center fountain, our
heat frozen in Amy’s camera as we rode red line
one downtown and rose into the purple hour.