anonymous girl & re-gifting the sky 

by the time you pull the 
wrapping paper off the
sky i will
already be someone else--
you will catch the gift tag
when it falls
down from a cloud--
you might mistake it for
a gum wrapper--
it's from
the anonymous girl who
poured the steam off a tea
kettle to make the night
blush grey--
i kept the stars hidden
so you 
would have a reason to 
take me back.
in the city i don't have
to be anyone-- i can
order a coffee from another
notch in the shin of
a sleeping stone body
& pretend like i have always
stopped there-- 
i can put
more money than i should in
the tip jar as an offering 
to the buildings to ask
them to keep sleeping-- we
need a few more thousand years 
to use their skeletons as a city--
i sit at the counter & 
look out the window like
all people who write poetry do.
i'm stuck because
in my mouth everything rhymes 
with your name--
when you go to bed in june
i'll re-wrap the sky for you--
this time with red & green christmas
print paper & when you open
it the sky will turn
to snow around us--
there will be no falling here--
only waiting for the ground 
to stop snowing too--
you still won't know me
& i'll still drop my names
in pennies on the sidewalk
for other people to find--
oh what are we but anonymous poetry 
on the backs of our own hands--
unwrap the sun i left for you--
peel off the rind-- each
smile in a little juicy clementine 
lobe-- everything good
you have to unwrap--
to you we are still anonymous
& i'll probably recognize 
your face only from where
i sit in the coffee shop
i'm pretending i stop at everyday--
i go here to write love
poems for people i'll never meet--
someone has to be no one today--
it's a terribly brave
things to wrap up the stars
without knowing who
might unwrap it &
who might find my name
at the end of a poem they're
accidentally writing late 
at night or in the morning
when the grey june sky turned 
into snow.