Urayoán Noel
CINQUAINS FOR PAST LOVE
CINQUAINS FOR PAST LOVE
The sound
an island boy
makes in empire’s airspace
becomes dark flight, the hum of sky-
scraped nights.
He comes
early to the
afterparty and meets
another island boy. Wound, then
wonder.
He dives
into his head-
space. They lock eyes. Desire’s
subplot: flesh-ghosts, footnotes to the
city.
In bed,
sick on Sunday,
soup and soda crackers,
about to crash like brackish waves,
they kiss,
claiming
what’s left of the
day. A tandem of one,
they dream of the next galaxy
and laugh.
Photos
of the two of
us in the last warmth of
summer, before the privacy
settings
of drowned
suns, before the
architectures of fright
that went up where our passwords were
written.
My hand
around your waist
lands smoothly. We’re unseen
but we were here before the apps
arrived,
riding
the slow rapids,
past sirens, the sighs of
unborn children who all look just
like us,
only
wiser, since they
know the economy
of gestures, pointing to a shared
struggle.
This place,
this displacement
of ours, hours of that day
when we finally stopped hating
our names.
A red
constellation
echoes in me, missing
your light after the songs of tagged
corpses.