Branch Library

I wish I could find that skinny, long-beaked boy
who perched in the branches of the old branch library.

He spent the Sabbath flying between the wobbly stacks
and the flimsy wooden tables on the second floor,

pecking at nuts, nesting in broken spines, scratching
notes under his own corner patch of sky.

I’d give anything to find that birdy boy again
bursting out into the dusky blue afternoon

with his satchel of scrawls and scribbles,
radiating heat, singing with joy.

Edward Hirsch

by Paul Lucas Mathay Bruselas

Months ago we sat together smoking
by the bathroom window.
It was mid-afternoon and I asked you,
casually, if you would ever leave me.

A storm was apparent.
Streaks of jagged light brushed the grey sky.
As you looked out the window
I could see your eyes begin to water,
begin to speak,
begin to ask me the difference

between being in this state and out of it.
I tell you that now I am only in the present.
Now I only feel – be it the drops of rain
immensely cooler to the skin
or the movement of the clouds
becoming the turning of the world,

only now do I see my eyelashes
and wonder whether they are twenty-two
or twenty-seven as they frame
your face against a dying lamp.

My eyelids seem barely able to hold off
an eventual collapse, like a dam
flooding from rain, needing release.
Slowly, wave upon wave gushes out
into a river barely prepared
and unable to contain the weight
of salt water.

You tell me that if I listened
I could hear the voice of the city.

You tell me that if I listened
I could hear every conversation,
each crying out and whispering.

Here I forget yesterday, I forget
what we talk about
the minute we talk about something else.
I am only here

sitting beside you, braving the slight drizzle
not caring about the impending storm,
unaware of it despite the constant
rumble of thunder. I only see the white tiles
and the green curtains blowing with your hair,
I only hear the last gasp of the cigarette
you ditched in our makeshift
ashtray (a plastic cup half-filled
with water from the tap).

I can’t remember. I can’t remember.
Nothing exists now,
save the shadow cast by a pot of flowers,
somehow similar to the silhouette of your profile,
your arched nose, your deep eyes,
your lips half open as if about to whisper,
all gone at the gust of the wind.

Eventually I shut my eyes and try to sleep,
trying to remember everything about us,
on whether anything mattered or was worth it,
only to find myself drifting away,
like a kid’s lost balloon, higher and higher
to a tired dawn.

——

I can’t wait for Paul’s book to be published. I have such talented friends.