Poem: Our Map

Our Map

I capture your image in my head

as my train matches the speed of yours,

silver bullets shooting through the heart of our city—

like a pair of 500 ton metallic cupids

our trains dance with each other and so we dance,

and so does the image of you in my head—

damn what a beautiful image it is!

with eyes like fountains and lips so full of passion that looked like they might explode—

hair with waves that even the bravest Rockaway surfer wouldn’t dare

I dip you behind, pull you back to me, then twirl you away,

hinting as our hands depart that we’ll meet at the next station

there on the platform we collide,

not in the traditional sense of train cars colliding, crumpling metal and person,

but in the way that two trains come together and form a new subway line

with many beginnings and no end

I say “hello”

you say “hi”

I wondered if I had chosen the wrong word but maybe it’s best

there on the subway platform we decide to make new maps of New York,

charted below the incandescent bubbles of a receded wave

on the worn sand in Coney Island,

with South Brooklyn as your heart and Hunter as the head—

I secretly decide I am going to have you fall in love with me

more times than you have in your entire life,

when I said hello but I don’t plan on saying goodbye

____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________