On approach, there’s that level of comfort

The waxy ease the cripple had around his eyes

Seen so much

When did he decide it was okay to let the rope go slack?

(I envy that resignation)

Must have taken decades

Chest tight with hope and scrabbling for an ideal that redefines itself every seven seconds

Enough

I’m starting to know what a real deep breath feels like

They fight the mirror

They chew on the narrow metal bars and don’t stop even if they swallow their teeth

But that has nothing to do with me, really

Losing balance is its own kind of balance

Surrender maybe but it takes less work than trying too hard

Which most of us are guilty of

I’ve forgotten sleep (an impossible narcotic)

I’ve forgotten rage (useless audiences)

I’ve forgotten love (lingering nectar, warm suffocation)

But I remember new things

Hallucinatory laugher, raw and pure and sweet as comb honey

Being weary

There’s no crime in it

I took my daughter into a blizzard.

It was after midnight, echoless in the muting snow.

The streetlamps

Made everything amber, light bounced backwards off the drifts and against the houses.

I carried her in an old blanket, blue Irish wool with one corner chewed away by the dog

So it was the outside blanket now.

I set her on a mound of smooth snow.

She stared back. Was that mistrust?

I had to pick her up.  I had become essential.

It bugs me I don’t miss Chicago.

I wish I could manufacture homesickness

drum up some longing, but it’d be hollow and she’d know the difference.

Because you can only fake it for a minute or two.
Come on strong, but not too strong.

Don’t get pushy already. Try too hard and I’ll call ya later.
Just relax yourself and do your goddamn job.

So even though homesick I ain’t (so she would have me say)
I love the honest memory.

Grousing about the price of whatnot in ironclad vowels.

The gridwork. The brickdust air.
Humming Old Style signs framed by glass block and strings of Christmas lights. Railroad apartments with gray-scrolled radiators and black-and-white bathroom tiles the size of oyster crackers.

Piss. Fumes. Grilled onions.

Goofy. Clown. Jaggoff.

You’ll get burned in the bleachers but at a double header you’ll need a jacket by the second seventh.

They don’t play much in October, but it’s always been an October city.

It bugs me I don’t miss Chicago.