You can barely hear the forest
just the coughing of trees
and air that we have filled with smoke

Even our buildings lean back
from us – I would not be surprised
to see our buildings one day

start turning out their insides
throwing people out of windows
and through department store glass

chucking the mannequins too for being
shaped like us, wiping clean
whatever hands they have

and breaking into the bay. They will be
ruins ashamed of themselves
And we will be ruined, each of us

a hallway holding pictures of organs
the heart which followed you once
with its eyes but you were younger

I was younger. Life was full of fear
that never happened, or else it
happened in the corner of my eye

and stayed there. Now that’s gone
and the street is filled with children
screaming about the impossible

they have seen, with no one there
to nod and ruffle their hair, no one there
at all who isn’t pointing

into the open mouth of a stranger
Today in Boston it’s the open mouth
of a sidewalk, holding in our body parts

like a polite dinner guest