Drugged on isolation, our days forget their numbers, just another, and another still. In the bath, we light candles and play-drown ourselves to see

what patterns emerge behind our eyes. We hover fingers above the flame until our skin waxes and we plunge back into water, cooling what the heat marked. 

To love, now, requires a subtle, taking energy. To cook is to kiss. To clean is to bathe  each other’s feet. Language extends  into a nothingness of hours. What is there 

to say, even. I cannot hear above the sirens again. Someone is on their way to a lonely end.  What color can we use for that? Charcoal? Raven? 

We eat ice cream on our roof and look across red brick, Brooklyn, aged steel, and Manhattan skyline spinning angelic light. To be here 

is to sign your name on the line of movement. 

Now, still with disease, the trains run  empty, carrying silence from one end

to the other. Blocks from the tracks, men  play music in attempt to reincarnate summer. All day the sirens remind us of blood, of breath, 

and limp bodies ruin the quiet of our dreams. The sunlight curses us awake. The city screams.

Or is it us? We only faintly hear.