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I hide in my own shimmering while S. holds a plant

and their camera. On an it’s-not-the-heat-it’s-the-

humidity kind of day we slugged ourselves to Jean-

Talon market to buy herbs and succulents. I

remember  myself as a crystalline lens swooning

light.        Ready or not, here I rest.        Exchanging

 

nothing for nothing halts our intention to buy. We

leave hangry. They ask me what’d you wince

through to arrive here already obliterated? except

that’s not what they said.        I want them to know

I am not a tide.   Except I can’t afford a property big

enough to hold all the ways I’ve changed.     I didn’t

wince—my myths were more casual than that.

                                                    You couldn’t pay me

 

too much for the details of my first kiss. Then two

ID photos of myself expired and renewed: the

subject of a third photo.     Does this haircut make me

look gay enough?         I tell them I only left the

prairies because of the way it folded me up; or that’s

why I wasn’t asked home.          The iris of my eye

was always itchy, making wanting seem like

darkness stitched to other darkness.

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