Dreamlike
(Homo Bulla)

We walk close together and you tell me you’ve been spitting up blood.
“How so? Since when?” I grip your forearm more tightly.
“But you should”
(stop spitting up blood?)
I once believed
(when I was a little girl? until a moment ago?)
that thought could be focused
into a bubble of health
(of love, just love)
smash it where it hurts, where the pain is
pop it and heal it
(yes, come on, let’s try that right now)
“But you should try.”
Then we break apart, a sentence stuck in my head:
I leave you at dawn in the city that smells of ethylene.
(has it got to do with chemistry poison cancer?)
But before this (or is it right after?)
we are (I am you no longer are)
in the temple and my voice is steady:
Alberto
Alberto
Berto
Alberto

It’s you.
The bubble of your name
that explodes in our ears.