at night i feel like my own city

at night i feel like my own
city-- pull the street lamps
off my shoulders to kiss--
let's boy meet girl 
in an island of light--
we forget sleep & go through
the park-- pretend
not to see the foreheads of
the buildings over the trees--
we are wilderness shoes--
sit on the wooden benches
of my thighs-- this
is how my knees say
welcome-- wipe your feet
on me--
at night-- at night
at night i use
pay phones with their tails
buried into nowhere--
i call my grandfather-- 
he too
was a rib bone in the 
thicket of this city-- 
a notch
in a line of houses with a 
gun under the windowsill--
this body--
my body-- the train pulls
in under my finger nails--
i clutch the pillow-- 
dig myself towards 
south street-- my tongue
a taco vendor-- knotted
soft pretzel steam
in my throat-- how could
you learn me this thoroughly?
that is between god & i--
but neither of us have
taken the time
to go walking-- we always
take a bus off 12th street--
sometimes i snip off
the elm trees from
the back of my neck-- their roots
clutching asphalt & undoing
the sidewalks of my collars--
last year i stayed over
night in time square in one
of those big hotels resist
reality-- the best part 
of the whole trip was
sitting at the window
there on the thirty-forth 
story-- let myself fall into
a skyline-- buildings contorting
into my torso--
we become our own city subtly
then in a rush of light--
i couldn't help but remember
the passage from 
Catcher in the Rye when
Holden looked out the hotel
window to discover the anonymity 
of our bodies in the windows--
our separate & secret lives
pulled forward on railroad
track finger nails clawing into
bed frame-- i tell everyone not 
to be afraid to be alone--
feel the street lamps
turn on in your shoulders--
crack your knuckles like
tires clapped in pot holes--
girl meet girl with me 
under a lamp post--
let's become a postcard
we mail to ourselves in the morning--
but for tonight-- for tonight
let yourself become a city
fall out the window
& evaporate in flight