III

Like the first cigarette,
the first embraces. You had
a small paper star
shiny on your cheekbone
and you occupied the marginal stage
where parties joined with loneliness, music,
or the gentle desire for a common return,
almost always later.

And it was not darkness but those hours
that turned streets into public decorations
of a private love.
Our possible fugitive shadows
dared together,
smoking with upturned collars.
Silhouettes with voice,
shadows in which history took shape,
the history that today we are,
once wagered the heart's peace.

Yet furniture
also did this to us.
In front of that window —which never closed well—
in a room that looks like ours,
with books and with bodies
that could be ours,
we loved each other
beneath the city's first yawn, its warning,
its arrogant protest. I had
a small paper star
shiny on my lip.