You bit your nails to bone
             that summer. It was the year of homemade bombs
                    and your bullshit bank teller job, snipers on the roof
             of the Hilton Garden Inn. You hugged me, but
                           your face was hard
when I saw it. Bituminous. August
                     in my rented backyard. The bees are dying in waves
             but that day, there were so many. In your final city,
                           the spines of streetlights melt,
                                         scoliotic, into the sidewalks. Soon,
             the experts drone, this place will be uninhabitable.
I have forged an island
             atop your absence. Each day I wake
                           closer to sea level. It was never supposed
             to be like this. You’re dead; I’m
                                      reading Rilke on the roof. Night rises
             like heat from the sidewalk. The expressway glares
back at me in heterochromic beats, red, white, red,
                               white, cells of blood, breathing. I don’t write
              these days. God can’t love you
the way I do, will never know you
             like I know you. You’re a casual fan of the future
     but you don’t want to live there, like a city you know
             is too dirty, too busy. Living fossil,
           fata morgana, I told you the truth. This world a sum
of all I’ve lost and all that’s left. This emptiness
          Oulipan. You’d rather die
than live with it.
           In this alone we differ.