Maybe This is Falling
This is what a boy has to say,
when asked what falling in love is
on the edge of summer's reign:
The cities that you lived in
will never fully be conquered; their winding roads
and lamp posts will never stay the same
save for the way the sun paints
its dirtroads and rooftops.
They will be as sweet and warm as the time you first saw them.
You open the windows every morning
and breathe in the smoke from the city's many kitchens
and let in the sound of his children playing
on the sidewalks.
They will be as sweet and warm as the time you first met them.
Then you will feel your feet move across the hardwood floors
out the door and into the streets. You wonder
when the baby around the corner learned how to light a cigarette,
or how the old fishmarket vendor got on his wheelchair.
Still you smile at them, like you've known them through and through,
as if they were as sweet and warm as the first time you talked to them,
and trace the graffiti on the walls of your house
like they were masterpieces
on the ceilings of Cathedrals you never dreamed to touch.
This is how you fall, a boy would say:
The city you choose to live in
is the city you choose to love,
and the city that you love,
is the city that you live in.
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The past few weeks have been so busy. It's funny, though, in the thick of things, when the world seems to turn around in circles outside of its orbit, you hold on to things that you know you should hold on to.
You don't want to lose them in the fight.
