Robitussin

Slipped in the slum

of your silence

heavy, fever

breaths

hot and muggy summer

your quiet

thickens

retching under

the speakers’ roar.

You crouch devout,

without motion,

on a small

wooden barstool

that can be

folded up

at night

like sweating hands

shivered and fixed

in phone-lit

prayer.

Outside, dangling

free, disproportionate

heads

suckle the mirror.

Your habit wholly

covered

your licked fingers

here seem puzzling artifacts

frozen in

a younger suburb,

straight ahead

straight through

the turbulence that

floods your

kaleidoscoped skull

reminders of something

there out far

something there out deep.

Commutered sweat

Jams through the

TV glow

clots

the revolving doors

in a hurry

to get home,

and yet she sits

next to you –

patient, calm

entrusted to belief

and appletinis,

rigor mortised

in her stare.

A milky torrent

floods

both sides

of her

as if she’s a tiny

clump of

rose-colored island

forcing its head above

the swell

a river’s perfect scar.

You feel the current

pressing you

to one side

then the other

and quickly you tuck

your fingers

beneath your arm

search your pockets

for empty plastic,

while still

the current presses.

She twists

and turns

and pulls at

your wrist.

But you

have no extra smile.