On the day Erin moved in
with her new fiance,
I retraced our path down Kelly Drive
beneath the bluffs of Mt. Laurel,
where the mausoleums are built
into the steep hillside,
like granite and marble anthills
to some underground city,
and where two years before,
me and her had watched the
sluggish Schuylkill carve away
the soft limestone below us,
flowing green and heavy like bile
from some deep, fatal wound,
while the clouds above us
recalled a stegosaurus’ spine.

Perhaps, I said to her, if we wait
here long enough, that big river
will carve the earth away
beneath our very feet,
and we’ll plummet
Down
Down
Down
Into the bile and be cleansed

She turned away from me, coolly,
unmoved, and walked back across
the vast, dead ground, perpetually surrounded
on all sides by rot and mortality,
and I couldn’t help but think
how it was growing inside of her

On the day Erin moved in
with her new fiance,
I parked a few blocks from
the cemetery, in front of
an old stone Baptist church,
which was thumping with bass
and the elevating tumble and roll
of gospel as salvation.

I thought to myself
This is an odd neighborhood;
(odd for reminding me
of you)
and in need of some salvation,
a lot of salvation,
Though aren’t we all?

The homes there are nothing
like I imagine her new one
will be like. They are desperately
poor, with shards of glass littering
the cracked, uneven street corners,
vacant house after vacant house,
boarded windows ominous signs
of urban ruin and filial separation.
of a city sealing itself from within,
Drowning as if beneath
the ice of a frozen lake.

The cemetery was not changed
and neither was the Schuylkill,
though the clouds were
the ribs of a gutted blue gill -
Cracked, frail, ready to crumble.

So many things in this city do not change,
though I, too, am moving,
moving in with a woman I
do not love, but in whose
face, loss is not manifested
within every crow’s foot,
freckle,
or hidden crevice.

There are nights with this woman,
when the window is open,
and cold, rivery air floats in to
lull me into the half conscious time
just before sleep, the time that
so scarily resembles death,
That I dream I am another man.
In your green and white eyes,
like water lilies
dappled in snow,
I see, as a new man, life brimming upwards,
bursting forth from every birthing pigment.

I only see this life as a new man,
Because as an old one
I cannot see beyond my own regret,
and find myself wondering,
What is one more death
in a city of so many?