Tuesday

© Peter Marlow / Magnum

When I can’t talk to anyone

I like to sit in front of water.

If I have a minute to feel good

I take that minute. I have a cigarette.

I walk into the museum of past lives

and rearrange all the chairs.

This poem is meant to be read

at the bar on a Tuesday

when you’re dehydrated

and not feeling so great.

I want to know you

like a dog touches the wind

with its tongue. I want to know

why time moves impossibly slow

when pain rises, and what makes it

speed up like two people

looking for each other

at the end of the night.

When was the last time someone

looked at you like a bridge

held by cold air? Like the cars

flying down the FDR

taking us where we imagine

is better than where we are.

I imagined it differently also.

I imagined more than mixed feelings,

tough leather, the last yes coming

so quickly. Men and how they

pace awkwardly before parting.

Cats and how they roam

freely in bodegas at dawn.

The towers in photos.

The tulips of April.

The person in a theater

now watching the credits,

reading the names, stalling

to put on their coat or their scarf

or their gloves. Or maybe

not stalling. Maybe they’re

waiting for the music to change.

Not everything is an ending.

Not anything’s worth believing.

And you can begin anytime

like this whole world began

out of nothing. You can walk out

tonight and feel totally new.

All you need is the right pair of boots.