A high powered radio transmitter and all the information in the world. I still couldn’t reach you. I wanted a monument that was invisible to everyone but us. Like a still body of water and the sound of the city at dusk. Or a reflection.
Later I was in a gift shop in chinatown trying to think of something significant to buy. There were charms for health and prosperity, but nothing to slow down time. And definitely nothing to stop it.
i’d written
ten thousand poems
to an imaginary city
a world of words
writ
against impossible
skies
where silence soared
like high rise buildings
tunneling towards the sun.
we landed
in the capital
at dawn
your fingers
squeezed to your
temples
and the sound
of distant
helicopters
all the simple
parts of our lives
vanished
and at that moment
i gave up on
ever remembering
what happened next…
it had something to do with
violence and everything to do with sound
we ate Vietnamese food
in the suburb where I grew up
and waited for the panic to stop
it was dawn when you finally came round,
a blue car with the music
turned up
across the road I saw
the colour of our shadows
turn to white.