We put a picnic blanket down
on the scrubby lawn
in front of the supermarkets.
And we lay there
exchanging squares of cheese
and small goblets of red wine.
We arrange live electrical wires
around the blanket
so that nobody will bother us.
We take your wide black scarf
and wrap it in a silky mess
around our heads
to soften the smell of car exhaust.
The highway just a few feet away
and the moving sidewalk roamed
by puzzled travellers.
The movements in the parking lot
are like a swarm of beetles
moving on the outside of the scarf;
we can see the world's smallness,
and feel its brittle rhythms recede
to give way to the massive rhythms
of our blood. I do something strange:
I duck out from under the black scarf,
run into the parking lot, kicking up
chunks of sod as I dash away,
and I grab the payphone in front of the store
and I call your cellphone
and you pick it up, bewildered.
I watch you from the storefront,
thinking I might see something different
from a distance, might pull some monsterous
tragedy out of your voice and stomp on it
before it kills me. You slowly peel
the black scarf from your face
and see me staring from across the parking lot
as silver automobiles move across my body
and my eyes glow with the terror
of the distance. You warn me that you'll hang up
and I ask you, please, if you're going to take
your voice away, not to cover your eyes.

I must have stepped on a current in the wires
as I was running away from you; I know
some force revealed my brokenness,
and you were frightened. Now you can't
move toward me without stepping on those wires
that I mashed into the ground with my fleeing feet.
And the phonelines in the air
sag like clotheslines grabbed by children
who want to climb them onto the clouds.