WHITE NOISE

I go looking for the white light of your skin in the rain. I go with the clinging impulse of dust to clutch the small noise your body gives off.
When I strain, I can catch it, even in this churning
chain-smoked bar. Our brief time together has taught me
your silence is a buried trick, thick with awkward
dresses, the ugly flowers of childhood, living rooms that gave off cold and never heat,
your father calling distractedly over the racket of jazz.
Your silence a tightly packed blossom that might explode
into spore, drowning your lungs, your voice.

It is raining. You are leaving tonight.
Rivers are joining to set off black currents between us.
Leaves are bursting into murderous green bounty,
the air is choking with life,
more weight to a city already too heavy.
Bats shriek nervously above the park,
the siren-wide, stretching pale light
of empty playing fields, where rain falls
in the smallest of particles, gathered
in vast black nets of grass. When I feel like this, I feel
I could come apart in my own hands,
I could hold you.