An Opening
After Wolfgang Tillmans
Don’t need summer.
Still haven’t figured out how
to work the radiator. It doubles over
with strange smells. I’m a little exhausted.
Each day I go to the same café
but it’s closing for good. I wonder
what Vanessa will do next.
Certainly not dart into that clear,
distant blue where I’d like to be.
I don’t think I’ll make it there either.
So I’ve been brainstorming other places.
I have two empty postcards in the corner.
In one, two people sit naked
in green trees and big, stylish
coats. I hope they’re friends
with the man behind the camera.
I hope it was candid. Surely not.
Still, it reminds me of the purest love.
Not Edenic. Maybe a little Edenic:
They’re just . . . there.
The other postcard is the man
and the deer. The man and the deer.
The man and the deer.
Nobody else around.
I don’t know how I’m even able
to see them. But I can tell they’re
old friends, my purest loves;
it’s never been more convincing.
How do you possibly enter
the simplest, perfect scene?
Picture me in summer, please.
In December, it’s hard to turn up places
like you’ve always been there and came
from nowhere. I put on my shirt, jeans, two
sweaters, my ugliest coat. I walk around
for somewhere new to put myself,
leaving tracks everywhere.
They multiply in the snow.