The City in Which I Love You (and steal lines from good poets to prove it)

Alisa Muelleck

Lay down these words
unheard. I breathe
some things I do not profess;
you neither can nor should understand what it means.

I want to listen as you breathe yourself to sleep
and let my fingers brush your hair;
into my empty head there comes the
huge lingering passion

it is not sad, really, only empty.

When I stand upright in the wind
and feel the heart
beating in a handful of nothing,
you would think
I'm addressing you.

You invaded my country by accident,
though I fall in love too easily.

All night I've held your hand
as if you had
(loving, rapid, merciless)
asked for a story
from the composition of my mind.

I keep saying and saying an unending pain
I cannot change
but you
I would spend a tunnel-sunken night
in search of you

When I have utterly refined my isolation
(fragile, insolent, absolute)
that together they are one man

here is the shadow of its joy.