Bodies of Water by Michael Passafiume

And what am I to do with the moment
you said you’d never forget?
Remember it for you?
Hope that it one day collapses
into extinction before
we do?

and that first night we climbed
atop each other’s desires —
fingertips & exhalations
erasing all doubts

and the two of us walking
hand-in-hand along the beach
at sunset — we do clichés so well
you had that one framed

and the poems we’ve exchanged —
your words so carefully
placed, arcing
over the horizon, slipping
through my hands till I think,
I’ll never be able to right
this ocean

and we ordered in Chinese food
during your visit,
made a nest of my couch
because every space you inhabit
becomes a new home,
and after the credits rolled
you remarked that even
in a movie about apes
both female leads
—one human, one primate—
were stereotypical caretakers
and I felt a fool
for having let Hollywood
brainwash me again
and the following day we fought
our way over the Brooklyn Bridge
despite being outnumbered
by tourists & selfie sticks,
hell, we even paused mid-battle
for a photo opp of our own —
you brandishing a decapitated head,
me a pair of mismatched limbs
and we smiled, oh,
how we smiled!
as daylight shed behind us
and an ordinarily impassive
Lady Liberty nodded
in stony approval.

What I mean to say is
Spinosaurus is long gone
& lemurs can’t swim
& large bodies of water used to
terrify me until I dove
into yours.

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Michael Passafiume is a Brooklyn, NY-based writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Alembic, Dirty Chai, Drunk Monkeys, MadHat Lit, Meat for Tea, Poetry Quarterly, SLAB and The Subterranean Quarterly, among others. His chapbook, "archipelagos," was recently published by Blue Hour Press