playing pretend

in the city today everyone plays pretend.
the food vendors hand out invivisble hot dogs 
people move their mouths like chewing
& they can almost taste the salty meat &
the sharp yellow mustard. 
others perch on non-existent benches.
we are unsure if they are supposed to be
people or the missing pigeons.
overnight everything material evacuated
& left us here. just our skin & our fingers--
a gesture can reveal routine & desire.
we kept moving without it all. i walk 
& the sidewalk is a sheet of glass.
there are holes in the sky where advertisements 
used to be so i stand there a moment
& try to imagine what they wanted me to buy.
my wallet is a nest of inverted eggs
all glistening with empty. we stand on
each others shoulders & ask for at least
just one cloud so we can pretend to see
something in it. the buses become 
herds of people who travel together
marching the streets that have become angles.
the geomtry is us-- our corners &
our heights. there was a formula once 
for how to get out of this but i left it
in a notebook & there are no more notebooks.
what is a city without trees? what is 
a city without piles of garbage & 
stray shopping carts? 
we fall in love more easily now
without nothing to buy each other.
we say i'll meet you when the sun turns 
flat & clear. seeing through the other side
we notice blankeness. it's not a simulation
if this is the only process left.
i eat bags & bags of chips--
telling myself that the first one
is barbeque & the next is sour cream.
there's no train to remove us from the city.
we are the city. you can't take the 
body out of the measurement. i weighed 
one-hundred thirty pounds last time
i checked. i have my friends picj me up
& weigh me with their fingers.
they say i am much heavier than 
i let myself believe. alone in my apartment
i keep a secret-- i do own one thing--
one last object. a spoon which 
i use to check my reflection. i see my face
long & stretched thin like a messy spill of pigment.
i touched the metal to my tongue. 
i tell myself how lucky i am to have this.
outside the people make car-horn noises.
the people make sirens & screams.
the people chew as loudly as they can.
i go out to join them.