A mind littered with happy music, a heart broke
into quieted halves—what you take from the platter
is on the house. A shingled sequel, rain-swept sleeves.

Long forearms will lift you up to a place
the paint left clean of prints. Fingers spread
the slogans, over fences, under the dampened loft.

What happens here is memory—yours, to be exact.
A need to read the landmarks, a safe
cracked by fastidious hands. You will not qualify

everything, and you shouldn’t, even the night
it storms. Rooms crowd beneath the station as trains
stall for towns at a time. This is your country.

There are no shortcuts. The pages turn and you forget.