Last place in the world I want to be,
but you asked me.

The air is still enough
to freeze light, break shadows,
bellow from deep in a planet
living too close to the edge.

Faces are simultaneously youngish
and anguished,
too free of weight
and too melancholy for insight.

This is a temple of sadness
even as it offers: infinite choice,
the beginnings of forever,
rooted in nothing.

I came here to feel you close
and you left me, wanting.

Shy, crowded in, eclipsed,
because my voice is not allowed
to be the cry it cries out to be.

I love you and I fear your slide
as if into the vague bliss
of shadowy plans and undoing.

Can you know me? I ask.
What about those dreams
that took me so far from here?

Can you be the breath that gives life
if you are at home
here, in this brazen captivity?

Last place in the world I want to be,
and you asked me, and I don’t
see what there was for you
or for me in the falling in.